Pattern of genetic diversity of North African green frog Pelophylax saharicus (amphibia) in Tunisia.

Genetic variation among 39 samples from 16 populations of the North African green frog Pelophylax saharicus from Tunisia was investigated, using 513 bp partial sequences of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b. P. saharicus exhibits little genetic differentiation, with overall nucleotide diversity Pi = 0.002 and haplotype diversity = 0.7. The intraspecific pairwise divergence was low (mean 0.2 %). The results from AMOVA analyses indicate that there is no evidence of genetic structuring related to the three studied groups (north, center, and south Tunisia). As shown by the mismatch distributions, significantly negative values of Fu's Fs and Tajima's D statistics, this reduced genetic variability may be due to a recent population expansion from a smaller founder population.