Anfíbios da Bacia do Rio Branco: preenchendo lacunas do conhecimento no norte da Amazônia

Abstract

The Neotropical region is the area which houses the largest quantity of species in the world, the Amazon being the South America biome with the greatest anuran species diversity. The Branco River basin, in the extreme north of the Amazon, represents a gap in the knowledge on the amazon amphibians. This thesis aimed: (1) To carry out a inventory of amphibians of the areas on the influence of the Branco River basin, including the records present in the literature, and to discuss the regional distribution of the species; and (2) To investigate the presence of cryptic lineages within the anurofauna of the Branco River basin, using the amphibian DNA barcodes tools. In this study 43 localities were sampled along the Branco River basin, covering differnt environments. We recorded 47 amphibian species belonging to two orders, 19 genera and 8 families, which together with other 21 species recorded in the literature, totalized 68 species of amphibians for that basin. Three species are new records to the region: Boana calcarata, Dendropsophus leucophyllatus and Osteocephalus leprieuri. The analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) showed that the upper and lower Branco River basin present significative differences in their species composition. The 16S rRNA mitochondrial DNA and four algoritims of delimitation (mPTP, locMin, bGMYC, GMYC) were used to investigate the presence of cryptic species in the anurofauna of that region. It was identified 41 morphological species, of that 10 have lineages restricted to the Branco River basin.