Long Anal Frog Phylogeography And Population Genetic Structure Of The Qinling Region Preliminary Study

The Tsinling Mountains stretch themselves across the middle of China, which mountain range locates mainly in the Northern province of Shaanxi. The Tsinling Mountains are the watershed of Changjiang River and Huanghe River, therefore, she provids a natural boundary between the North and South of the country, and supports a huge variety of plant and wildlife. The southern Tsinling Mountains Range goes east and west, the folds are complex and the valleys are quite narrow. The average height of the mountain is 2,000～3,000 meters(6,562～9,843 feet). The highest peak in a mountain range, The Taibai Mountain, is 3767 meters high(12,395 feet), and is one of the mountains that goes above 3000 meters in eastern China. Feirana quadranus is a most widely spread speicies in the Tsinling Mountains Range, which belongs to order Anura, family Raninae and subfamily Dicroglossinae, genus Feirana. This paper manages to look into population genetic structure and Phylogeography, to investigate the evolutionary history of Feirana quadranus in Tsinling Mountains.This paper analyses 42 individuals of Feirana quadranus among 6 geographic populations based on partial mtDNA cytb sequence. The total of 606 bp sequences include 26 Variable sites. The variations mainly take place in the last 1/3 piece of the sequence. A total of 14 haplotypes were determined and the mean haplotype diversity index h was 0.89895, and the haplotype diversity index h among the populations has the range from 0.00000 to 0.88889. The mean nucleotide diversity indexπwas 0.00516, and the nucleotide diversity indexπhas the range from 0.00000 to 0.00676. The value of Dxy among the populations was in the range of 0.00579～0.02614, and the value of Dxy among the populations was in the range of -0.00274～0.02327. The lowest of F_ST value /Nm value was -0.24551/-14.28170, and the highest of F_ST value/Nm value was 0.85047/3.13346. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that most of the genetic variation resides among groups (70.54933%), and within populations (15.00791%) and among populations within geographic groups (14.44276%). Neighbor-joining (NJ) analysis and Maximum-parsimony (MP) analysis was performed using Paup 4.0 program. The topological structures of these two trees are similar. All of the haplotypes divided into two main branches: Branch-I and Branch-II. Branch-I can be divided into another two subbranches: subbranch-a and subbranch-b.Minimum spanning network shows that there are two main clades in the network, which has a similar result with the NJ and MP analysis. We can find the ancestral haplotype, haplotype 5, in the network. We can Speculate the evolutionary history though these analysis results: It origins from Xunyangba and places nearby, and then spreads towards east and west. The eastward branch has been blocked off by a plenty of folds, however, the surrounding terrain is mild without jokuls, thus, Feirana quadranus in Lantian and Xiaoqinling still has a limited gene flow with its origin place; the westward branch meets a flat way at first, while it spreads to Fengxian and settles there, the orogenesis starts, and Taipai Mountain is lifted above, it blocks off the way in which Feirana quadranus westwards moves from its origin place, and what's more, the westward branch has no gene exchange with the origin place from then on, and separated a new local haplotype from the ancestral haplotype, which has a relatively further genetic distance from population in eastern Taipai Mountain.