Osteología comparativa de especies de ranas de lluvia (Anura: Strabomantidae) en el Municipio de Chinácota, Norte de Santander, Colombia.

Abstract

Colombia is one of the most diverse countries in terms of its anurofauna, with 866 extant species. In turn, it is one of the countries with the highest number of species threatened by human activities, emerging diseases and the high transformation of the landscape. A large percentage of anurans in Colombia belong to the Strabomantidae Family. Eleven species of Pristimantis and three species of Tachiramantis have been reported for Norte de Santander colombian state, but it is very probable that the diversity of frogs in the region has been underestimated due to the fact that many areas were little explored or were not studied until now. These frogs, known as rain frogs, exhibit great cryptic diversity and identification between species is difficult by analyzing external characters. In this project, the osteology of adult male rainfrogs was studied in a modified landscape in Chinácota, Norte de Santander. Skeletal anatomy was described in detail and intraspecific variation in cranial shape and shape-size was analyzed using descriptive methods, geometric morphometrics, ordering and multivariate statistics, trying to determine osteological characters that allow differentiating species of rain frogs from Norte de Santander. The results suggest that the individuals analyzed correspond to one or two strabomantid species not described so far. These possible new species share osteological characters with both Pristimantis and Tachiramantis species. The analyzed sample presented a great variability in degree of development, fusion and arrangement of the different skeletal elements, and it is suggested that the characters previously described as synapomorphic for Tachiramantis could be polymorphic. A tendency to reduce cranial morphological variability was found in the site with the highest degree of anthropic disturbance compared to the least disturbed, which is an indication of the effect that man exerts on the diversity of organisms.