Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2067/52705
Title: | A hotchpotch of water frogs in northern Italy | Authors: | Bellati, Adriana Chiocchio, Andrea Razzetti, Edoardo Bisconti, Roberta Canestrelli, Daniele |
Journal: | BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS | Issue Date: | 2023 | Abstract: | Water frogs of the genus Pelophylax have been widely traded by humans across all European countries for decades, and so far they have been shown to be invasive in most of them. The spread of alien Pelophylax threatens the persistence of native populations mainly via competition and hybridization. Particularly, the latter is worrying for the persistence of the native hybridogenetic systems, as it may induce hybrid swarms whose final outcome is hard to foresee. Alien water frogs have been already detected across several Italian regions, but the extension of the invasion is still unknown, in terms of both species composition and distribution. Here, we carried out the most extensive molecular survey of alien water frog populations across northern Italy, the main invaded area, and obtained a worrying scenario of multiple introduced alien taxa, often co-occurring at the same site. Frogs carrying the native mitochondrial haplotypes were found mainly at the edge of the invaded range. The most widespread taxa turned out to be P. ridibundus and P. kurtmuelleri, but members of the highly diversified P. bedriagae species complex also occurred in the western (P. bedriagae) and the eastern sector (P. cf. bedriagae sensu stricto and P. cf. bedriagae “Cilician West”) of the range. We inferred the geographic origin of alien taxa according to mitochondrial haplotype variation and provide the fact-finding background to investigate the impact of alien introductions on native populations, in order to evaluate effective and reliable conservation strategies for native hybridogenetic systems. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2067/52705 | ISSN: | 1573-1464 | DOI: | 10.1007/s10530-023-03088-2 |
Appears in Collections: | A1. Articolo in rivista |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | Existing users please |
---|---|---|---|---|
10530_2023_3088_Author.pdf | 1.82 MB | Adobe PDF | Request a copy |
SCOPUSTM
Citations
6
checked on Jan 31, 2025
Page view(s)
40
checked on Feb 5, 2025
Google ScholarTM
Check
Altmetric
All documents in the "Unitus Open Access" community are published as open access.
All documents in the community "Prodotti della Ricerca" are restricted access unless otherwise indicated for specific documents