Morphological and allozyme studies of midwife toads (genus Alytes), including the description of two new taxa from Spain

Allozyme variation in 31 to 50 presumptive loci of 12 populations of European midwife toads of the genus Alytes show appreciable genetic divergences (DiNe from 0.29 to 0.72) among four groups. These groups correspond to A. cisternasii Boscá, 1879, A. obstetricans (Laurenti, 1768), A. muletensis (Sanchiz & Adrover, 1979), and a new species from the Betic mountains described here as A. dickhilleni n. sp. Smaller divergences among geographic groups of populations of A. obstetricans (up to DNei = 0.17) support the existence of three geographic units in Europe corresponding to the previously recognized subspecies A. o. obstetricans and A. o. boscai Lataste, 1879, plus a third one described here under the designation of A. o. almogavarii n. ssp. The analysis of morphological variation among taxa using principal component and discriminant analysis shows a remarkable similarity between A. dickhilleni and A. obstetricans; these are cryptic species. A phylogenetic analysis of allozyme data using A. cisternasii as the outgroup supports a sister taxon relationship between A. muletensis and A. dickhilleni, with A. obstetricans the sister taxon to this clade. The historical biogeography of the genus is discussed.