# new Systematic



## germanfrogman

Hello,

much of you heart it sure, there are some new gerera-names...

Some you can read here:

http://www.dendrobatenwelt.de/Unterseiten/name.htm

Good luck
PS: sorry for my bad english


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## Jordan B

Can you give us more info on who came up with this, whether it is verified, etc? Maybe we can get some taxonomy buff's to join in **coughChuckcough**... If this is true was it a result of Jason Brown's work?

If these are indeed the new names for many of the species, it will be hard to get the hobby as a whole to accept them. I'd like to see more proof before adopting the new species names.


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## Ben_C

I second what Jordan says...
Do you have a source in the primary literature that verifies these new names?
~B


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## germanfrogman

*new genera*

Oh sure...

Thats the result of the work of Taran Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo and so on...
All genetics analyses are flowting in the script. Its very large - 262 sites!

The only thing I added - azureus and tinctorius, this work comes soon.

Here you can find the document:
http://research.amnh.org/~grant/publica ... l2006b.pdf

sorry for my bad english...


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## Ben_C

Oh, _that_ paper...
Had it sitting on my HD for almost a week and didn't even open it! Thanks for posting this as it reminded me that I need to get off my @$$ 

Interesting read so far!

~B


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## kyle1745

262 pages... thats a good book...


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## chuckpowell

I just found the paper today. We'll have to wait and see if the proposed new taxa are accepted by other herpetologists, but judging from the authors I'd say its a no brainer. They'll all be accepted and I'm sure there is good data to back everyone up. But until I read the tome I can't speak on specific points of the taxonomy. 

Best,

Chuck


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## dragonfrog

This subject is new to me, and probably others. What is the jist of this? Are they changing the names of some of the frogs? and why?


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## Catfur

From what I read, all of the taxonomic classifications (except for a few oddballs) are backed by both genetic data, as well as scads of morphological traits.


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## KeroKero

Steve - The family Dendrobatidae is currently undergoing MAJOR taxonomic revision, a lot of it spurred on by genetic work (and there was also just a lot of frogs that weren't studied much past their original descriptions). There are something like 250 species of Dendrobatids, with more on the way, and the relations of many we're well known. From the basic skim, what I'm seeing is a lot of the frogs that were known in species groups, are now being elevated to genus status. Basically... former taxonomists took the "clumping" way of looking at them, but on recent examination a lot of splitting has been going on... 

For example, check out how the species groups of the "former" _Dendrobates_ as we knew it have been broken up:
_Oophaga _- eggfeeders
_Ranitomeya_ - thumbnails
_Adelphobates_ - the white egg group (quinqs, galacs, castis... and evidently captivus)
_Dendrobates_ - tinc group
_Minyobates_ - I'm guessing they are resurrecting this? Species group that was a genus, then not a genus... now a genus again... I'm confused because it seems like some of the former minys are listed in other genera with the exception of _M. steyermarki_? Or do I just really need to read the whole damn paper?


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## Catfur

Read the whole paper (or skim it), they completely reworked the entire family, from Aromobates to zaparo...


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## KeroKero

*sighs* This means we've got to note the taxonomic changes and I have to change definitons in the glossary doesn't it.


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## Jordan B

*BIG sigh* This means I have to learn to pronounce and memorize all the damn names, again. :roll:


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## kyle1745

I can't pronounce the current ones! 

While I sure want things to be accurate, this is nuts. Can anyone explain how our current naming wrong? 

Has genetic data proven it all wrong?

Anyone with time to read the whole thing want to give us an overview?


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## germanfrogman

*the reason for the splitting*

Hello a little overview is on my site (I'm not ready) :
http://www.dendrobatenwelt.de/Unterseiten/name.htm 

The species in the genus Dendrobates (and Epipedobates) are to different to be in just one genera. Everyone knows the different between D.histrionicus (new O.histrionica) and D.tinctorius (if you can breed histionucs like tinctorius let me know ) :lol: 

These differents are the reason for the splitting... Many genetic analysis are done. I dont know, maybe there are some little mistakes, but I think its ok...

Best, André

sorry for my bad english


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## chuckpowell

Are you all kidding? This is great - its been needed for a long, long time. Now the distribution of species in genera make sense. And its not just the family, its the superfamily. I've just gotten throught the abstract and introduction, but there are a number of new taxa [i.e., a new family, three new subfamilies and four new genera, plus several older genera are reserected]. Its an exciting paper, that if we use it will help us keep our animals better. 

Leaning the names isn't a big deal, but learning more about our frogs and using that knowledge to better keep our animals will make the hobby better in the long run. 

Best,

Chuck


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## ETwomey

chuckpowell said:


> ...but judging from the authors I'd say its a no brainer. They'll all be accepted and I'm sure there is good data to back everyone up.


I heartily disagree. While there is obviously a ton of work and a ton of very useful data in this manuscript, they went waaaay overboard in the last 30+ pages when they started renaming every genus. So the thumbnail group is genetically distinct from the pumilio group. Big deal. We already knew that. A generic designation is basically a judgement call - if you want to say they are different then the question becomes how different do they have to be to be separate genera? Those of you familiar with some of the old 'what is a species' threads may recall that a species definition has plenty of grey area to allow for ambiguity. But a genus definition! It is like saying 'apples are different from oranges but not different from pears' - it is simply a name to facilitate understanding. A species at least is a discrete ecological entity with definable boundaries. So when these crazy guys from the AMNH decide to rename everything to Ameerga or Ranitomeya - ok, they can call it that if they want, but it doesn't mean everyone else has to. This paper basically provides no novel arrangements of species relations yet they were presumptuous enough to realign and rename practically every genus as if it were something trivial to be completed in a paragraph. Anyone that wants to see how a genus should be described, check out Myers 1987 for the conception of Epipedobates.

So, this paper is not going to be 'accepted' in the sense that I will decide to ignore their renaming of every frog (possibly with the exception of their revisions of Colostethus, which definetly helped towards forming monophyletic groups), yet it will be a very valuable resource for systematics work. I just think these guys got a little over zealous and for some reason decided to use the names of this Bauer guy who was writing for a Dutch hobbyist magazine? Who is this guy anyways? I don't think he could have picked a more ugly name than Ameerga.

Evan


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## kyle1745

Not a bad explanation of Genus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genus

While I am by no means qualified to argue any of this one way or the other I wonder much like my field how are standards determined. I think of the biggest problems in most fields are standards. 

For example what constitutes a genetic difference? Then what is enough of a difference to change the genus?

I need to find some time to read this paper....


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## chuckpowell

Kyle,

There are no standards. There is a manual and some good books (if anyone wants a reference let me know) which tells you how to describe a new species, but not what is a new species is. If someone feels a group of animals they've found or discovered is different enough from other groups of animals to be described as a species, then it can be described. Taxonomy is fluid and always changing, but it's leading us to a better understand of how myrid of living creatures we observe are related to one another. Names are "accepted" or "rejected" if they are used by other scientists in the field. Someone else who comes along and knows, at least something, about the animals in question and says yes or no, that makes sense. 

The names new and old and unused in this paper group the animals together in groups that make sense. Like animals together, wether alike in genetics, looks, behavior, or ecology, or any combination of these. 

Best,

Chuck


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## c'est ma

Drawing the lines is always a human decision, based not only on the data but on how inclusive or not scientists want to be. (Fancy description of lumping versus splitting.  )

Personally, I agree with Chuck, and think that ultimately the proposed revision will prove less confusing, rather than more, esp. to newcomers.

After all, as the first line of the abstract states: 

"The known diversity of dart-poison frog species has grown from 70 in the 1960s to 247 at present, with no sign that the discovery of new species will wane in the foreseeable future."

With this many spp, it seems to me that the addition of genera to separate out clear spp groupings can only help. Then, when newbies ask what a "thumbnail" is, one can just say "any member of the _Ranitomeya_;" an obligate egg-feeder is in the genus _Oophaga_, etc. IMO, this makes it much simpler to get a handle on what constitutes a related group than having to learn how to divide up all the spp currently in Dendrobates by species name only.

(BTW, it's _Ameerega_, not _Ameerga_--if that sounds any better to you, Evan.  Personally, I don't find either "ugly." One more matter of subjectivity, I guess.)


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## dragonfrog

Thanks folks for clearing some of this up. For those of us that have just rencently got into this hobby (me, one year) it is going to be rather difficult because I have spent a lot of time and energy learning how and why it is the way it is now!!! And now they want to change it all. Maybe once I see it all in print (study the report!!!) it will make since.

I just want to know who is going to learn the correct pronunciation of these new words and then teach us!!!


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## Ben_C

> For example what constitutes a genetic difference?


A difference between two sequences. If my _cytb_ gene has the following sequence:
ATATATATAT

and yours has:
ATATATATGG

we have a difference of 2 Base Pairs (bp).

I hope this helps,
B


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## kyle1745

Ed,

I assumed there was not a clear cut standard but maybe there should be. An example would be X amount of genetic diversity is required to say its a separate genus.

Im fine with change as long as it makes sense... then again Im not sure in this case I could say what makes sense.


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## defaced

At least they kept most of the species names the same, and the ones they did change are only minor. That would be a pain to relearn.


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## Guest

*Paper reflection*

Apparently I should stick to engineering


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## ColombianFrogger

I dont know, but I have readed some parts of the work and in my opinion, the genus descriptions are very poor and vague, with poor morphological characteristics shared by many genera (Aamerga, Ranitomeya and Dendrobates shares a lot of those) and they makes big mistakes in the species asignations to a genus...


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## KeroKero

Kyle - keep dreaming 

Defaced - there are actual rules of taxonomy... while genus may change and what not the species name remains as originally described unless the species is considered invalid (as in a member of an already described species, like amazonicus being an invalid synonym of ventrimaculatus) or if the "species" was actually described as another species name first (just because the one that caught on more doesn't make it more valid, its whatever came first). 

This rule is also why some of these genus names are being resurrected... because they were the original names.

Now the confusion of excepting some of these new revisions... _Minyobates_ was pushed up to genus status in the past, but was never totally accepted... mostly because the difference between the _Minyobates_ from other members of their former genus (_Dendrobates_) was about equal to the differences between the various species groups (tinc group, thumbs, eggfeeders, quinq group). If the other species groups weren't raised to genus status, then why should _Minyobates_? Now that the _Dendrobates _species groups were proposed as seperate genera, _Minyobates_ now seems a lot more valid in that context - but _Minyobates_ was demoted back down to species group...

The basic question is if other taxonomists will accept that the differences - once considered species groups - are different enough to make them genera. Yes, it would make it easier to except these frogs as being different when they are in different genera rather than species groups (which is hard to explain to newbies anyways) to those new to the hobby. You expect genera to be different where many newbies expect members of the same genus to be very similar - a total misconception when it comes to (possibly now former?) genus _Dendrobates_ whose chracteristics (especially reproduction) were across the board.

I'm interested to see how well this paper is recieved in the scientific community over the next year or so.


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## elmoisfive

I've downloaded a copy of the publication but haven't had more than a chance to skim it so any comments will be postponed until I have a chance to do so.

I'd be interested in information/perspective as to what level of peer review these sorts of papers receive prior to publication. I'm far more familiar with a system of requiring independent review by 2 or more subject matter experts prior to publication. I would note that the emergence of web publication/pre-publication has put major pressure on the peer review system however.

It strikes me that this sort of realignment would make an excellent topic for next year's IAD (hint, hint).

Bill


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## ColombianFrogger

In the revision of centrolenidae by Carranza and Lynch, for example, they divide the family in 3 genera: Centrolene, Cochranella and Hyalinobatrachium, because their major diferences, but inside them separated the genus by species group (for example prosoblepon group in Centrolene, fleishmanni in Hyalino...). What if they decides to divide the family in 10 or more genera?

Minyobates was valid only for steyermarkii, under the cephalic amplexus presence, a character unknown in Dendrobates. Studies showed the lack of cephalic amplexus at least in some species of the genus. For years, all the other members were just in Dendrobates. I think steyermarkii is an enigmatic species who deserves the genus, with relationships with the andean Dendrobates from Colombia, not with the guyana shield species of the tinc group. Maybe the found of species in the eastern flank of the cordillera Oriental in Colombia will enlighten the genus status of both Minyobates and minutus group of Dendrobates.


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## ETwomey

Though, this study was unique among recent genetic work in that steyermarki falls outside of the Dendrobates genus, whereas all other studies have shown steyermarki nested well within Dendrobates, meaning it should itself be Dendrobates. The Grant paper had some flaws in their methods, notably that they used nothing but parsimony for constructing trees rather than some of the new and more generally accepted methods (i.e. maximum likelihood), which are showing steyermarki is in Dendrobates.

Evan


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## bluedart

This paper is very interesting. Sure, it'll make the *hobby* easier to understand, but does it mean that it's worth the overhaul? Is it accurate? Sure, it makes general distinctions (obligate egg feeders, thumbnails, tinc group, white eggs). But, looking over such a broad base, you could apply many of the same arguments for other genra of animals around the world. Unfortunatley Im on double doses of Day Quil at the moment, so this post may make no sense whatsoever.

But, the fact remains--I'm anxious to see how accepted and debated this paper becomes.


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## Guest

*Hats off to Grant, hobbiest's slow down*

Ok, I rarely post on this but Ric Sanchez (Evan) said I may be interested in this.... I first want to urge people to proceed with caution, this manuscript, like all others, is not perfect and should be thought of more as a “proposal”..... please before you revamp your webpage and start throwing around all this new lingo, please let the scientific community sort through this.... this paper will definitely be a resource for all systematic biologist in years to come, however it isn’t perfect and there are many problems with this manuscript. Many that are so great, in my opinion, they discredit much of the good science....first off the phylogenetics... I dont want to get into too much detail as I may formally respond to this paper in the future, but the AMNH is the last stronghold of "cladists", a term used to refer to phylogeneticists that only use Parsimony in their inferences....over the past 25 years this method has slowly become obsolete, the core of its function relies on Occam’s razor, stating that "the simplest possible explanation is the best. This method doesn’t take into account any thing do to transition-transversion ratios. DNA bases pairs (ie A, C, G, T) can be classified into two groups pyrimadine (C and T) and purine (A and G), these groups are structurally different….the likelihood that a pyrimadine will change to purine (ie C change to A) is much lower than that of a pyrimadine to a pyrimadine ( C to T). This isn’t accounted for in any parsimony phylogenetics… further parsimony has no way to account for saturation within a gene….gene selection is very important in phylogentic reconstruction….if you are trying to define relationships between a group of closely related organisms than you want a gene which has a “fast” or “high” rate of evolution (the rate in which it accumulates mutations). This is a very difficult problem to overcome, certain genes will resolve some relationships better than others (depending on scope of phylogeny)…. Overall no gene is perfect, saturation occurs when a mutations start to revert to ancestral states (for example A to G to A)…in this example there is no way to recognize that in this individuals history it’s “A” changed to a “G” and then back to an “A”… however you can measure the rates that each nucleotide “changes” to the other 3 nucleotides and statistically estimate the rate of this occurrence, however this can only be done in maximum likelihood/ Basian phylogenetics, not Parsimony….. further Parsimony doesn’t handle missing data well ….if you look at the data sets used in these analyses most of the individuals are missing a few gene regions to quote the paper “the amount of sequence data analyzed ranged from 426-6245 bp”…. this is very confusion for Parsimony inferences and can often lead to erroneous topologies…. OK, assuming Parsimony was the best method to estimate the phylogenies, let’s look at the support most these trees receive…. OK, Evan mentioned Steyermarki, if you look at this node that defines Minyobates, the Bremer Support Value (which has been cautioned by many to be inaccurate in large data sets) is one…what this means is that Minyobates is only supported by one site substitution of the mean 3740 bp analyzed. That means Minyobates can “sunk” by changing one base pair…..If you are curious go through look at the numbers, the Epipedobates clade is riddled with low numbers…. Further look at the number of most parsimonious trees (the best trees found) it is 45,520...that means the tree published is made up from a 45,520 best trees (each difference from each other)...seems slightly confusing huh?.......So despite what many are saying as “overwhelming evidence”, I see a largely conflicting data sets and poor resolution…we are not in situation to be going out a limb here.. this MS compromises 200 years of Dendrobatid systematics and despite what they claim, their current phylogenetics are not overwhelmingly clear and well supported… Ok, so this is just a smidgen of concerns I have with this subject…so if you ask me what you should do, I say wait a couple years until the Canatella Lab finishes their work on the Tree of Life Grant, something the AMNH wanted to do but didn’t receive the funding, so they got secondary funding and “beat” the Cantatella Lab to the punch…. Just because they finished first doesn’t mean their science is better…. . Lastly hats off to Taran Grant and his wonderful paper, I want to end with that because it truly is a great work and inspite of the problems I mentioned above it does have its merits (just not the genera changes and species descriptions)… 

Jason L. Brown

PS. Sorry if this is confusing, this subject really is quite complicated....


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## KeroKero

And most of us barely understand basic Mendelian genetics :lol: 

Good to hear your feedback and it will be interesting to see how things turn out... this ms vs. the Cantatella Lab future proposed organization (do you think their's might have less of the mistakes you mentioned with this ms?)

As with all things scientific, best to sit back and wait a couple years and see how the scientific population likes it.

I find it entertaining that the hobby has been so slow to even flat out resistant to some taxonomic changes in the past (partially due to disconnection from the science), yet now it seems like members of the hobby, at least on this board, jump at the changes that something like this paper has brought up. It's a proposal, an idea, and the hobby should just sit back, let the scientists that know what they are doing duke it out until they come up with a general agreement (as much as they ever do) and then play the name change game in the hobby.

I do think these proposed changes are worth a note in the caresheets presented, as in the past proposed names have caught on in some circles and confusion results (such as the "Phobobates"). Just a note that they are proposed synonyms or something like that.


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## germanfrogman

*on my site: overview over all genera and all species*

What an excellent froum... I would not have expected so many reactions.

I have listed all new genera and link to all species:

http://www.dendrobatenwelt.de/Unterseit ... toidea.htm

Greetings

http://www.dendrobatenwelt.de


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## Guest

Ric Sanchez said:


> ... I just think these guys got a little over zealous and for some reason decided to use the names of this Bauer guy who was writing for a Dutch hobbyist magazine? Who is this guy anyways? I don't think he could have picked a more ugly name than Ameerga....
> 
> Evan


Hi all, 

Apart from several other criticisms, the use of Bauerian names does not seem right to me. First of all they weren't published in a 'Dutch Hobbyist Magazine'. (as an editor of two of those, I must state that we usually know better then to give room to publishing new names..) but in a series of privately xeroxed papers. Very much on the edge of what could be accepted according to the Int. Code Zool. Nomenclature. 
Second, as far as I know, Bauer isn't a biologist or if he is, he knows very well how to hide that fact. He has had a bookstore for several years and has indeed red many a book on biology. His genus descriptions are vague. Ranitomeya for instance is made to contain ''all small red dendrobatids..'' I could tell a lot more about his 'taxonomies'' , but...

I doubt if Grant et all have seriously red the papers. They made at least one mistake about them. They regard 'Ameerega peruviridis'as a new combination. But Bauer described peruviridis (actually it is nothing like a description) within Ameerega, in the same paper as in which he describes the genus and I doubt if the name has ever been used in another combination. Ameerega peruviridis, Grant at all use the name twice, is described by appointing a picture in a hobbyist book as the type species and by giving a description of what is to be seen on the picture. 

The cladistic approach has it's problems. I cannot imagine how someone can seriously include ´chromosome number unknown´ in the diagnosis of a genus.. (Adelphobates) unless it is a mistake or a case or cladistic blindness.. 
As far as the more colorfull species are concerned I think the article confuses matters more then it solves. I think I´ll stick to the ´dustbin´names for a few years more. 

Greetings, 

Peter Mudde


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## KeroKero

Interesting thing to note is that the The American Museum of Natural History Amphibian Species of the World version 4.0 was just released, and seems to follow this papers's reformatting of the Family. I used to use this as the generally scientifically accepted list of species in the past, but damn that change was fast.


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## Guest

I'm a bit confused:

After Frog Day, based on what seems like just a conversation or two, people completely jump on board with with the whole tricolor/anthonyi reclassification and everything, even though a paper hasn't yet been released. But then someone releases a paper, and everyone's saying wait a couple years and see how it goes before we start re-referring to everything in the hobby.

I'm not seeing any sort of continuity here... :?


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## Afemoralis

*Woah nelly...*

So just to add more fuel to the fire-

1. I agree with the other Summers students. The name changes don't help.
2. The paper tries to deal with two very different issues- Systematics- the 'classification' and 'grouping' of the frogs, and Taxonomy or 'naming'. While related and intertwined, the two are VERY different fields each with it's own set of rules.
While Jason was nice enough to go over some of the issues with the systematics portion, the taxonomic portion is just as riddled with inconsistancies- what constitutes 'publication' being one of them. If anyone wants to delve into this side of things here is the code by which it is all supposed to work for animals:

http://www.iczn.org/iczn/index.jsp

It gets hairy quick. But the long and short of it is that this paper is making poorly supported arguments for the recognition of names that do little to illustrate the systematics. 

Like Jason, I congratulate the authors on a fairly monumental work. However, I feel as though they have overextended thier reach.


Cheers,

Afemoralis


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## elmoisfive

skylsdale said:


> I'm a bit confused:
> 
> After Frog Day, based on what seems like just a conversation or two, people completely jump on board with with the whole tricolor/anthonyi reclassification and everything, even though a paper hasn't yet been released. But then someone releases a paper, and everyone's saying wait a couple years and see how it goes before we start re-referring to everything in the hobby.
> 
> I'm not seeing any sort of continuity here... :?


A fair challenge. I suppose the only difference as I understand it is that there was an anthonyi --> tricolor transition and now the proposal is that the change was too broad so the true tricolors (highland and moraspunga) should be differentiated from the closely related anthonyi.

On the other hand, I haven't gone around relabeling my Santa Isabels and Salvias as 'anthonyi' just yet :wink: 

Bill


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## KeroKero

One of the things that has really gotten me is some of the changes in the species names, especially in the thumbnails (_Ranitomeya_) where species endings have been changed from -us to -a such as:

ventrimaculatus to ventrimaculata
amazonicus to amazonica (and its interesting this is a valid species)
fantasticus to fantastica
flavovittatus to flavovittata
fulguritus to fulgurita
igneus to ignea
intermedius to intermedia (and why did this become a species?)

And thats just half the list, I don't feel like going thru the rest. I looked thru the INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE online and could not find a valid taxonomic reason for these changes.


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## KeroKero

Actually, the tricolor/anthonyi name change was more at IAD. Afterward, at least one "major" breeder changed his name usage in the hobby. I was lucky enough to hear part of these conversations, and having personal observations and hearing the arguments, I tend to go along with it. After the initial paper in which _anthonyi_ was tossed into _tricolor_, the in press paper is not the only one to toss them back together (Schulte 1999 and the recent Grant et Al. 2006).

This change had been noted on AMNH Amphibian Species Database v3.1 for a while, and I considered that a sign that it was probibly a scientifically accepted change. Then again, v4.0 came out with all the changes from the Grant et al. paper (which I'm having serious trouble accepting) so... maybe I shouldn't be accepting anthonyi/tricolor with such open arms lol.


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## Afemoralis

With regards to the "us" to "a" changes referred to above, those at least ARE a part of the system- the ending of the specific epithet must be in agreement with the name of the genus. So if you recognize "Ranitomeya" the endings of amazonicus etc. need to be changed to agree in gender with the new genus. 

Afemoralis


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## Guest

> After the initial paper in which anthonyi was tossed into tricolor, the in press paper is not the only one to toss them back together (Schulte 1999 and the recent Grant et Al. 2006).


Is there a way to get ahold of the Grant et al. paper? And did Dr. Caloma release his yet (I thought I remember something about that from the specific conversation that took place about that on here)?

And I'm not at all saying that the anthonyi/tricolor thing isn't valid at all...but there just seems to be an inconsistency in how things are being accepted. For instance (and I'm not trying to attack you here, Corey...just using this as an example): a major breeder decides to change the name, and a few people hear some calls and the arguments and then just decide to accept it. That, to me, sounds even less 'official' and convincing than this paper where, for all we know, the same thing is being done. I'm just confused as to why the latter is being tossed around as being less credible, and as I said, it just sounds inconsistent...or that we're just choosing what we want depending on what we want it to be. 

Or does the scientific community actually work in such a fairweather way, that it's just about seeing who likes to use what, and whatever majority ends up adopting or dropping said new classifications after a couple years, we just adopt their preferences? That's a bit unnerving.

Going back to the anthonyi/tricolor debate, things are now being put back to what they _were_ before. But if this is the most appropriate grouping, then why were they changed in the first place, and on what grounds was that change accepted? Just because someone presented some arguments and everyone sort of went along with it? (I'm sure reading one of those above-mentioned papers would help--where do you guys find these things? Can the average Joe get access to this stuff?)

Anyway, some of what I'm seeing here just seems to be so inconsistent at best, completely contradictory at worst.


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## chuckpowell

That's an easy one. The gender of the species name has to match the gender of the genus name. _Dendrobates_ was a masculine name, _Ranitomeya_ is a femine name, -us is a masculine ending and -a is a femine ending. Simple really and its is in the code. 

Best,

Chuck



KeroKero said:


> One of the things that has really gotten me is some of the changes in the species names, especially in the thumbnails (_Ranitomeya_) where species endings have been changed from -us to -a such as:
> 
> ventrimaculatus to ventrimaculata
> amazonicus to amazonica (and its interesting this is a valid species)
> fantasticus to fantastica
> flavovittatus to flavovittata
> fulguritus to fulgurita
> igneus to ignea
> intermedius to intermedia (and why did this become a species?)
> 
> And thats just half the list, I don't feel like going thru the rest. I looked thru the INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE online and could not find a valid taxonomic reason for these changes.


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## chuckpowell

First off yes that's the way the scientific community works. Someone or some groups works on a subject, usually for a number of years. Then publish their results. After that scientists that work in the same field, or related fields, judge if the work makes sense against what they do. After a number of years a consensus is generally reached. That doesn't always mean the consensus is right. Every once in a while, years later, someone comes along and reverses what was previously done and again, with new data, it makes sense. Its the way its done. I work with eastern Pacific fossil mollusks and that's what I've been doing for over 20 years. 

Best,

Chuck



skylsdale said:


> Or does the scientific community actually work in such a fairweather way, that it's just about seeing who likes to use what, and whatever majority ends up adopting or dropping said new classifications after a couple years, we just adopt their preferences? That's a bit unnerving.


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## chuckpowell

Corey you have to remember that the lead authors work for the AMNH. Likely they also work on the Amphibian Species Database so yeah they'd accept their work. 

Best,

Chuck



KeroKero said:


> This change had been noted on AMNH Amphibian Species Database v3.1 for a while, and I considered that a sign that it was probibly a scientifically accepted change. Then again, v4.0 came out with all the changes from the Grant et al. paper (which I'm having serious trouble accepting) so... maybe I shouldn't be accepting anthonyi/tricolor with such open arms lol.


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## KeroKero

Ahhhhh true... didn't realize that.


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## Guest

So Chuck, when should the hobby sign on and begin using new nomenclature in these types of instances? Is it a matter of the hobby always being a year or two behind the scientific community, creating a constant and 'always behind the times' lag (we wait until it shifts completely within the scientific community and then start to use it, then the hobby has its own fade-in which takes a few years...then if/when it completely fades out and shifts into something different, the hobby again has its own respective fade out.... Will this always cause the hobby to be so far behind in these matters? Again, just voicing questions and thinking out loud here)?

Personally, I'm not against any of this, as long as it seems to make sense and it is in the effort to be as specific and authentic as possible to the relationships of species, etc. that we see. I guess my question really boils down to this: *what type of relationship should the hobby keep with this sort of thing?*


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## c'est ma

Let's just try to do better than the tropical fish hobby, where some things like "kribensis" and "plecostomus" haven't been either for years.


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## elmoisfive

I think it's important to keep the perspective that this is one publication from one group of scientists and until thoroughly reviewed and validated (in this case agreed to I suppose) by the broader scientific community, it's a scientific communication and proposal, nothing more.

A key feature in science is independent verification. Something that I suspect will be a few years in coming. 

Bill


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## chuckpowell

My opinion is just my opinion, but I do work in animals systematics. Yeah there are problem; every new work has problems. But this is a far sight better than what went before. I keep on seeing people complain that they didn't consider this or that. They did what they could and left the rest for someone else. When these new people publish their work then we can decide. This paper is what we've been give and I think its a big step forward. 

Personally I admire these authors as they didn't immediately throw out hobbiest publications as worthless. You may not like a name, you may not like the author, you may not like where the name was published, but the name is out there and shouldn't be disregarded out of hand. 

But, we are a bunch of hobbiest and we can pretty much do what we like (and we do). You can take it or leave it as you see fit. For myself I'm going to start using the names. Remember also they haven't changed any species, or described any new species, they've just changed the arrangement of the genera so it makes sense with the criteria they set up - accept it and starting using it. 

This will change in the future, but the last major generic changes in Dendrobatidae were in the 70's and 80's. Do we want to wait another 20 to 30 years before we decide to accept these names?

Best,

Chuck



skylsdale said:


> So Chuck, when should the hobby sign on and begin using new nomenclature in these types of instances? Is it a matter of the hobby always being a year or two behind the scientific community, creating a constant and 'always behind the times' lag (we wait until it shifts completely within the scientific community and then start to use it, then the hobby has its own fade-in which takes a few years...then if/when it completely fades out and shifts into something different, the hobby again has its own respective fade out.... Will this always cause the hobby to be so far behind in these matters? Again, just voicing questions and thinking out loud here)?
> 
> Personally, I'm not against any of this, as long as it seems to make sense and it is in the effort to be as specific and authentic as possible to the relationships of species, etc. that we see. I guess my question really boils down to this: *what type of relationship should the hobby keep with this sort of thing?*


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## Guest

*Hooray for monophyly!*

I have been watching this site ever since I saw the frog exhibit during my Spring Break trip to Atlanta, but I had never been moved to join and respond until my recent reading all of this discussion about the recent paper by Grant et al and my reading of the tome. 

I really appreciate the posts by chuckpowell, and I was surprised by the back-handed compliments by some of the other members. Clearly, this publication is a huge step forward in our understanding of how dart frogs are related to each other. With my biological training, I was shocked by the comments of one member who suggested that phylogenies and classification are unrelated. Classifications are only meaningful if they recognize monophyletic groups (i.e., all species stemming from a single common ancestor), which can only be discovered by phylogenetic analysis. They are the exact same field of science in my mind. This is one of the many strengths of the Grant et al paper. Now that they have created all of these new generic names and other supraspecific groupings, we can make all sorts of predictions about the characters that they did not include in their study. For example, they did not mention anything about the white eggs in Adelphobates. Is it surprising that this character that they did not include is found only in the members of this genus? Obviously, no. Similarly, will it be surprising if the next species of mammal found has hair and mammary glands, also clearly no. This is why monophyletic taxonomies should be welcomed with open arms. They are meaningful. Furthermore, they are difficult to generate, particularly for a large group like this, and they are wonderfully predictive about the biology of newly described species in these genera. What did we know about any Colostethus before this publication - it was probably brown and uninteresting? Now, we can find the more interesting "Colostethus" (which there are plenty of) that are now placed in other genera. Using this classification, we can make predictions about their biology, track them down, and hopefully get them into the trade or the lab to study their biology.

As for some of the other concerns highlighted, one of the things that I have learned is that the maximum likelihood methods highlighted by some members are not really logical for morphological characters. What is the likelihood of evolving white eggs or any of the other traits that these authors describe? This cannot be modeled by some equation like DNA sequence evolution. This data set, unlike recent dart frog studies, actually included hundreds or morphological and behavioral characters (actual biology that we know and enjoy, not DNA) - how do you incorporate this into any method other than parsimony? I think that it is naive to discount parsimony in this study. It is just the bias of molecular biologists who don't know anything about the anatomy of their organisms.

Anyway, I hope all of you join with me and apparently chuckpowell and support this new taxonomy. It remains to be seen whether all of the names will be supported. If frogs are like the animals I study, then I think the consensus will follow the Amphibian Species Catalog or the next round of textbooks. Obviously, the ASC will follow the Grant et al study because Darrel Frost is an author of both. The question will be what happens with the textbooks and forthcoming scientific publications. My guess is that the Zug et al textbook will follow the Grant et al study since Caldwell is an author of the Grant et al study and the Zug et al book. This is just a guess, but it would surprise me if they don't follow the changes. What possible justification is there for not recognizing any of the older names that were found in this and all recent studies to be not monophyletic - none. In cases where there was additional splitting or lumping of older groups that were recovered as monophyletic, there might be some debate, but it will probably be minimal. 

Hats off to these researchers for their fine work!


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## ETwomey

I have no problem with their renaming of genera that were previously paraphyletic. Anyone who had seen a phylogenetic tree of Colostethus knew that this genus was in need of major revision. My one beef with the paper is primarily the realignment of Epipedobates and Dendrobates, both of which were monophyletic to begin with. So basically Grant just broke up two large monophyletic groups into several small monophyletic groups. Which is fine, if you are into that sort of thing, but behaving like ornithologists and putting practically every species in its own genus seems a little silly to me. 

As far as the analysis goes, including morphological characters into a Bayesian inference is not that hard. Its about the same as parsimony actually. After looking at his dataset, Grant had given each character basically a number corresponding to each character state. So, for instance, the character of median lingual process might be a 0 for absent or 1 for present. He did this precisely so that he could run this data as if it were sequence data. Jason Brown and I have been working on aligning his dataset and running a Bayesian inference to see how it comes out compared to the parsimony run. So when dendrobates.org is up again in a couple weeks we should have the results on there. I don't think discounting parsimony is naive. Molecular biologists don't discount it because they don't know 'anything' about anatomy, but because they know a lot about how neutral genetic material changes over time, and its not always in a parsimonious manner. By the way, we were not trying to completely discredit their methods, just pointing out that newer and better analyses are available.

-Evan

p.s. I think they didn't use white eggs as a diagnostic character for Adelphobates because it is present in Ranitomeya too (imitator, lamasi, etc). Although, it would have been a better diagnostic character than this: "Chromosome number unknown" which doesn't tell you much!


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## Afemoralis

*Re: Hooray for monophyly!*



fulgurita said:


> With my biological training, I was shocked by the comments of one member who suggested that phylogenies and classification are unrelated. Classifications are only meaningful if they recognize monophyletic groups (i.e., all species stemming from a single common ancestor), which can only be discovered by phylogenetic analysis. They are the exact same field of science in my mind.


I guess you mean me. And I gotta say, I stand by the distinction- the two field are very different. Although some camps are attempting to join taxonomy and systematics (Phylocode etc.), the reality is that the goals of taxonomy differ from those of systematics. While systematics seeks to explain the evolutionary relationships between organisms, taxonomy seeks to provide a stable nomenclature for the identification of a given population. Those two goals are often in conflict. As a coarse example consider "Reptilia". Monophyletic? No. Functional as a handle for the groups included? Yes. 

This isn't the forum for this disscussion so I'll leave it at that. But I will add that my compliments were not 'backhanded'- they were genuine. As are my concerns about such broad sweeping changes to both the systematics and the taxonomy when based on a) Parsimony b) Questionable names. 
Done family by family, I think this paper would have been held to a different standard- and it makes me curious as to what the Hylid folks, or the Newt people have to say on the matter. But I can only properly evaluate the dendrobatid section. And I think it's a bit off.

I'd also be careful of taking swipes at 'molecular biologists'. To my knowledge there isn't a single worker in Dendrobatid systematics who came to the field via molecular systematics- most are evolutionary biologists or ecologists- all were exemplary natural historians and biologists before they were gene jocks. While anatomy provides evolutionary insight into many groups, the dendrobatids are a rather spectacular example of how conservative many morphological characters can be. We'd be up a creek without genetic tools. 

Cheers,

Afemoralis


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## cubby23

OK I didnt read the whole thread but this is kinda rediculous.l What was the information that proves to make and change not only species names but a whole lot of newly named genuses.


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## elmoisfive

cubby23 said:


> OK I didnt read the whole thread but this is kinda rediculous.l What was the information that proves to make and change not only species names but a whole lot of newly named genuses.


I don't see how it is ridiculous…controversial yes…ridiculous no.

You might wish to read the article (link below) that stimulated this discussion 

http://research.amnh.org/~grant/publica ... l2006b.pdf

and then consider the arguments pro and con contained within this thread.

Bill


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## Guest

*Musings on Grant et al*

Dear Ric/Evan,

Please take another look and re-check you understanding of the former limits of Epipedobates–– it was polyphyletic before Grant et al corrected the taxonomy. Dendrobates like Dendrobatidae/Aromabatidae could go either way, but it makes sense for me for the egg eaters (e.g., pumilio) to be their own recognized groups. With the exception of the median-lingual-process frogs, is there a more coherent group?

I find your answer with regard to the inclusion of morphological data in Bayesian inference and your comments about our understanding neutral molecular evolution contradictory and enlightening with regard to your (mis)understanding of phylogenetic analysis. Your answer highlights that fact that likelihood models (as implemented in Bayesian analyses) take the lack of variation in molecular data as information relavant to inferring phylogenetic relationships (i.e., invariant sites are phylogenetically informative). I recognize that various likelihood models have been co-opted to allow for the analysis of morphological data in model-based frameworks. However, one of the concerns that has never been addressed by Lewis and other proponents of these model-based morphological analyses is the inclusion of invariant morphological character. How many invariant characters should you include in your combined analysis to "mimic" the equivalent (or is it not equivalent?) amount of invariant molecular characters. Should you add presence/absence of eyes, heart, fingers, toes, brain, etc.? Where do you draw the line, particularly since it will affect the results? I imagine that you don't have a good answer to this question because no one else does either.

How does coding the presence/absence of the median lingual process as 0 vs 1 have anything to do with allowing him to run it with the sequence data? That is coded with a zero and a one because that is what all morphological data sets have done since the first computer-aided analyses.

With regard to neutral genetic changes - what is neutral about the evolution of ribosomal DNA, for example? Has anyone ever suggested that its change is neutral.

With regard to the white egg character, I don't think they included it at all. I used that, as an example, because it came to mind.

Dear Afemoralis,

Reptilia is not useful, nor are any other non-monophyletic groups (e.g., invertebrates). What use are they and are they used in taxonomy or systematics. The last time I checked genbank, neither of those names were included in their taxonomy.

As for the dendrobatid systematics community, I have one question. Has any study whose focus is dendrobatid systematics (i.e., thereby excluding Haas or equivalents) ever used both molecular and morphological data besides Grant et al.? If they have not, and I may be ignorant on this subject since frogs are not my research organisms, then they are molecular systematists - regardless of their natural history chops.

Happy Trails---MEB


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## Afemoralis

I would argue that the fact that everyone knows exactly what you are talking about when you use the term 'Reptile' or 'Invertebrate' makes my case. Though these terms are crude, they do demonstrate one of the most important of taxonomic principles- stability. Much of their value, despite thier innacuracy systematically, comes from the fact that we can and do use them across levels of knowledge without confusion. Monophyly in this case does not have the upper hand. Now I'm not supporting the recognition of paraphyletic or polyphyletic taxa (...not today at least... :wink: )within the dendrobatidae, only using this example to point out the differences in the goals of taxonomy and systematics. Taxonomy craves stability, Systematics searches for truth in relationships. When it all works, the two go hand in hand, but that does not mean that they have the same goals.

The answer to your second question is I don't know. I'll have to pull the literature. My impression however is that morphological studies were failing to resolve the variability within the Dendrobatidae, with the last real run being in the end of the age of Phenetics. Ecological and behavioral data certainly saw a spike of importance, and have since been used to support the molecular phylogenies. I think that has been the pattern- the best tool available to gain understanding of the group has been molecular data- and then consideration of the other factors. So yes, most modern workers of Dendrobatid systematics use molecular tools. But I don't think they ignore the other data, and it would be foolish to do so.

Cheers,

Afemoralis


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## Guest

*Fair enough*

Fair enough, and I see your points, but I hope you see mine as well. I agree that reptiles is generally not too confusing, but other equivalents are. Where do you really draw the line on invertebrates (mutlicellur or with nucleus or what) or better yet fish - are sharks fish? coelacanths? amphioxus? These are all in the fish collection at the Cal Acad, but I never know what a fish is, and I am, frankly, afraid to use it in classes or even with other biologists. That is my only point. They are like common names, which help with people that are not specialists, but are imprecise with specialists. Since we should generally not use paraphyletic names (just like common names) in publications, they are not really part of the science of taxonomy. We normally try to just use clades, which is why I think that phylogeny and taxonomy are so tightly integrated that they cannot be considered different fields.

My personal take on the utility of morphology is higher than most of the other students here as well. I think that when we finally started to explicitly analyze large data sets with the advent of PAUP 3.0 in the late 80s, early 90s, we were unfortunately distracted by the molecular revolution, hence PAUP*. I think that in many cases large morphological data sets that are explicitly analyzed like the one in Grant et al would probably result in a pretty good estimate of how the frogs are related. I just think that few researchers have actually tried to make and analyze large morphological data sets, including a catholic sampling of traits. I don't think Grant et al analyzed morphology alone (at least in terms of presenting that tree), but that would have been slightly more useful than the preliminary molecular trees by Summers, Santos, and Vences, which were quite illuminating, but did not have as many species as Grant examined morphologically. I think that the reality is that it is just faster and more efficient with molecular data, which is fine, but I think that no one really tried to do the morphology "right." It is not better or worse than molecular data, but it has different strengths and weaknesses, and I think that the inclusion of both was the absolute strength of the Grant et al paper. It provides a framework that we can always use (with either or both a tissue sample or a specimen) to place new species into its proper phylogenetic placement (and into the proper genus for an informative classification). That is incredibly powerful and lacking in almost every frog study in existence. Can you think of another frog study that allows us to explicitly place and classify a specimen with either morphology or molecular data? Maybe if you have a South American Bufo... 

The reality is that I was just saddened when I read the criticisms of the paper when it really is the only study like that at the family (or is it subordinal) level in frogs. For all of you that are interested in using phylogenies for other purposes, this is the greatest gift because it gives you the comparative morphological and molecular data to look at almost any problem in dendrobatoids. With very little work, you can take most of his data, add a bit of your own for the new or additional species or specimens, and bam, the publication is done without having to track down scores of frogs and tissues. I wish we had the same situation with annelids.

Happy Trails,
Mieke


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## Guest

> Now, we can find the more interesting "Colostethus" (which there are plenty of) that are now placed in other genera. Using this classification, we can make predictions about their biology, track them down, and hopefully get them into the trade or the lab to study their biology.


I'm not in a position to argue the pros/cons of them being placed in other genera...but I would LOVE to see all those 'little brown frogs' shown some more attention!


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## Josh_Leisenring

Hey, All, can anyone provide a working link to this paper (none of the ones posted in the forum have worked for me, at least), or even e-mail me a PDF? I'm itching to get my hands on this thing! Thanks!

- Josh


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## kyle1745

Im uploading it now and will post a link...


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## kyle1745

http://www.dendroboard.com/library/Grant_etal2006b.pdf


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## r90s

Thanks Kyle.









Clyde


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## Josh_Leisenring

Sweet! That one worked. Thanks, Kyle!

- Josh


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