Data from: The role of climatic and geological events in generating diversity in Ethiopian grass frogs (genus Ptychadena)

Ethiopia is a world biodiversity hotspot and harbours levels of biotic endemism unmatched in the Horn of Africa, largely due to topographic—and thus habitat—complexity, which results from a very active geological and climatic history. Among Ethiopian vertebrate fauna, amphibians harbour the highest levels of endemism, making amphibians a compelling system for the exploration of the impacts of Ethiopia's complex abiotic history on biotic diversification. Grass frogs of the genus Ptychadena are notably diverse in Ethiopia, where they have undergone an evolutionary radiation. We used molecular data and expanded taxon sampling to test for cryptic diversity and to explore diversification patterns in both the highland radiation and two widespread lowland Ptychadena. Species delimitation results support the presence of nine highland species and four lowland species in our dataset, and divergence dating suggests that both geologic events and climatic fluctuations played a complex and confounded role in the diversification of Ptychadena in Ethiopia. We rectify the taxonomy of the endemic P. neumanni species complex, elevating one formally synonymized name and describing three novel taxa. Finally, we describe two novel lowland Ptychadena species that occur in Ethiopia and may be more broadly distributed.埃塞俄比亚是全球生物多样性热点地区，拥有非洲之角无可比拟的生物特有性水平，这在很大程度上源于其活跃的地质与气候历史所造就的地形——亦即生境——复杂性。在埃塞俄比亚的脊椎动物区系中，两栖类拥有最高的特有性水平，使其成为探究埃塞俄比亚复杂非生物历史对生物多样化影响的极具说服力的研究体系。狭口蛙属（Ptychadena）的草蛙在埃塞俄比亚物种多样性显著，并在此经历了演化辐射。本研究利用分子数据与扩展的类群采样，检验了隐存多样性，并探究了高原辐射类群以及两个广布低地狭口蛙类的多样化模式。物种界定结果支持本数据集中共包含9个高原物种与4个低地物种，而分化时间估算表明，地质事件与气候波动在埃塞俄比亚狭口蛙的多样化进程中均发挥了复杂且相互交织的作用。本研究校正了特有狭口蛙P. neumanni物种复合群的分类学地位，恢复了1个曾被正式归为同物异名的学名，并描述了3个新分类单元。最后，本研究描述了2个分布于埃塞俄比亚的低地狭口蛙新物种，它们的分布范围可能更为广泛。