A new golden species of Diasporus (Anura: Eleutherodactylidae) from southwestern Colombia, with evaluation of the phylogenetic significance of morphological characters in Diasporus

A new species of Diasporus is described from the lowlands of southwestern Colombia. The new species, along with Diasporus citrinobapheus, D. gularis, and D. tigrillo is the only species in this genus known to exhibit a yellowish coloration in life. The new species differs from all other congeners in having two chrome orange spots (=glandlike protrusions) on sacral region, smooth ventral skin, basal webbing between the toes, and distal papillae at tips of disc covers on fingers II–IV and toes II–IV. Further, the new species differs from all congeners by an uncorrected p-distance of >5.56% of the 16S rRNA gene fragment examined. In addition to the new species described herein, we demonstrated that the possession of a yellowish coloration in life optimizes unambiguously as a synapomorphy of a clade within Diasporus, which may be recognized as the Diasporus diastema species group. We also discussed the phylogenetic significance of two morphological characters previously considered of sys...