g. Broennimann et al. 2007; Pearman et al. 2007; Rödder et al. 2009). ITF2357 Species climate

envelope predictions have never been formulated with regard to DV. According to our understanding of DV, we largely expect climate conservancy in Amazonian and Guianan Atelopus as, under DV, species change their geographic ranges as a response to a changing climate (Fig. 1a–d). Vertical range shift of cool-adapted species along the Andean versant was up to 800 m (Bush 1994). However, maximum altitudes found on the eastern Guiana Shield have been about 300 m above today’s sea level only. As niche shift is facilitated in small populations pushed to their margin of environmental tolerance (Holt and Gomulkiewicz 2004; Holt et al. 2005; Jakob et al. 2010),

it may be assumed that within the eastern glacial forest fragment (Fig. 1c) climate envelopes have shifted in those cool-adapted species which have survived warmer periods. As a consequence, when comparing current-day Atelopus populations from the western signaling pathway and eastern Amazonian (including the eastern Guiana Shield) lowlands (Fig. 1c) their climate envelopes under today’s macroclimate are predicted to show some divergence. The contemporary postglacial was warmest about 8,000–4,500 years BP and temperature has decreased since then. According to DV, harlequin frog species should currently be able to re-expand their distributions into lower areas. When mapping climate envelopes of current-day Atelopus populations from both western C1GALT1 and eastern Amazonia under macroclimatic conditions into geographic space, they should range into central Amazonia. However, because of the Selleck Wnt inhibitor expected climate envelope shift in eastern Amazonian Atelopus,

mapped climate envelopes (which can be understood as species’ potential distributions) are predicted to be rather allopatric than sympatric. In this paper we combined different methodological approaches to study (i) if extant harlequin frogs display a central Amazonian distribution gap; (ii) if eastern Amazonian Atelopus constitute a single clade nested in a phylogeny comprising an enlarged data set from the Andes and adjacent lowlands; (iii) if climate envelopes of western versus eastern Amazonian populations (i.e., geographically well delimitated by a natural central Amazonian distribution gap) are divergent under today’s macroclimate; (iv) if allopatry is the result rather than sympatry when mapping these climate envelopes into geographic space. We discuss in how far our result reinforce and expand DV predictions. Methods A central Amazonian distribution gap In order to determine the extant distribution of Atelopus in Amazonia, 87 presence data points from all over Amazonia were employed in this study (Fig. 2). They were taken from published references and obtained through interviews with seven experts (see Appendix). Interviews were open, non-standardized, as described by Atteslander (2008).