Meeting Abstract
The Ecuadorean Andes sustains one of the most remarkable frog diversifications. In this region, nearly one in three known species of amphibians belong to the Pristimantis genus, which contains the majority of the direct-developing terrestrial frog species. Although efforts are ongoing to understand the diversity of Pristimantis in the Ecuadorean Andes, large regions, particularly the high altitude ecosystems, remain poorly documented and speciation and diversity of this genus remain widely misunderstood. Within this context, an interesting taxon with many unresolved questions regarding the patterns and process of diversification is the Pristimantis orestes species complex which is distributed across Páramo landscape and montane forest in the eastern and western slopes of southern Ecuador. Although some species have been recently included within this group, the small number of samples, geographic regions and loci included in these previous studies have prevented any definitive conclusions from being drawn. Moreover, delimiting and identifying species within this group is problematic because of the lack of molecular data, most notably from holotypes and paratypes. In this work we present a new molecular phylogeny for the P. orestes complex, reflecting the complex evolutionary relationships and diversification of the group with morphological, biogeographical and molecular evidence to support several new terrestrial frog species, as a result of a three-year series of expeditions, conducted in the high elevation ecosystems of southern Ecuador between 2500 and 4500m of elevation. Our results identify previously unrecognized species and suggest that the species exhibit restricted distributions, driven by particular elevational and habitat associations.
