HETEROGENEOUS BIOGEOGRAPHIC HISTORY AND HIGH LEVELS OFCRYPTIC BIRD DIVERSITY BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC AND TROPICAL ANDES FOREST

CABANNE S.; TRUJILLO ARIAS, N.; CLARAMUNT, S.; VIEIRA CHAVES, A.; GOMEZ, I; NAOKI, K.; DANTAS, G.; SANTOS, F.; MIYAKI, C. Y.; ALEIXO, A.; TUBARO, P. L.

Colorado

Congreso; 2014 Joint Meeting AOU - COS -SCO; 2014

American Ornithologisits Union, Cooper Ornithological Societa and Society of Canadian Ornithologists

The humid forests of the tropical Andes are isolated from the Atlantic forest of southeastern South America by savannas and dry forests (Cerrado and Chaco). Notwithstanding this isolation, both biomes share numerous species, which suggests a direct past connection. In the literature, one possible explanation for this pattern is that the connection occurred during interglacial periods and through gallery forests in the Chaco, while the alternatively hypothesis is that the connection occurred during maximum of glaciations and through the Cerrado. In order to evaluate predictions of the aforementioned hypotheses we performed phylogeographic studies of bird species shared by both regions. Also, we evaluated if the subspecies occurring in each region are full species. We used DNA sequences ofcytb, ND2, VLDL, G3PDH and FIB5 to study the phylogenetic relationships amongpopulations of six birds (Syndactyla rufosuperciliata, Thamnophiluscaerulescens, Poecilotriccus plumbeiceps, Arremon flavirostris, Cacicus chrysopterus and Trichothraupis melanops). The Andes and Atlantic forest populations of most of the species were reciprocally monophyletic, gene flow was very low and divergence between regions varied from Pliocene to late Pleistocene. These results have low information about the geographic location of the contact; except for S. rufosuperciliata and T. caerulescens, which supported an early Pleistocene connection through Chaco and southern Atlantic Forest. Our study indicate that the Atlantic and the Andes forests might have been connected, through Chaco, several times during the Pleistocene. Besides, our results detected high levels of cryptic diversity between the Andes and the Atlantic forests, and for S. rufosuperciliata, P. plumbeiceps and A. flavirostris suggest to consider the populations of these regions as full species.