Organismal traits interact with environmental variation to mediate how species respond to shared landscapes. Thus, differences in traits related to dispersal ability or physiological tolerance may result in phylogeographic discordance among co-distributed taxa, even when they are responding to common barriers. We quantified climatic suitability and stability, and phylogeographic divergence within three reed frog species complexes across the Guineo-Congolian forests and Gulf of Guinea archipelago of Central Africa to investigate how they responded to a shared climatic and geological history. Our species-specific estimates of climatic suitability through time are consistent with temporal and spatial heterogeneity in diversification among the species complexes, indicating that differences in ecological breadth may partly explain these idiosyncratic patterns. Likewise, we demonstrated that fluctuating sea levels periodically exposed a land bridge connecting Bioko Island with the mainland Guineo-Congolian forest and that habitats across the exposed land bridge likely enabled dispersal in some species, but not in others. We did not find evidence that rivers are biogeographic barriers across any of the species complexes. Despite marked differences in the geographic extent of stable climates and temporal estimates of divergence among the species complexes, we recovered a shared pattern of intermittent climatic suitability with recent population connectivity and demographic expansion across the Congo Basin. This pattern supports the hypothesis that genetic exchange across the Congo Basin during humid periods, followed by vicariance during arid periods, has shaped regional diversity. Finally, we identified many distinct lineages among our focal taxa, some of which may reflect incipient or unrecognized species.

Abteilung Biologie Institut für Integrierte Naturwissenschaften Universität Koblenz Landau Koblenz Germany

African Amphibian Conservation Research Group Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management North West University Potchefstroom South Africa

Biodiversity and Conservation Biology Department University of the Western Cape Bellville South Africa

Biogeography Department Trier University Trier Germany

Center for Macroecology Evolution and Climate Natural History Museum of Denmark Copenhagen Denmark

Centre for Tropical Biodiveristy and Climate Change College of Science and Engineering James Cook University Townsville Qld Australia

Département d'Ecologie et Biodiversité des ressources Aquatiques Centre de Surveillance de la Biodiversité Kisangani Democratic Republic of the Congo

Department of Biological Sciences University of Texas at El Paso El Paso TX USA

Department of Biology Drexel University Philadelphia PA USA

Department of Biology University of Texas Arlington TX USA

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Cornell University Ithaca NY USA

Department of Herpetology California Academy of Sciences San Francisco CA USA

Department of Vertebrate Zoology National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC USA

Department of Zoology National Museum Prague Czech Republic

Division of Research and Innovation eResearch Centre James Cook University Townsville Qld Australia

Flora Fauna and Man Ecological Services Ltd Tortola British Virgin Islands

Florida Museum of Natural History University of Florida Gainesville FL USA

Grupo de Ecología y Evolución de Vertebrados Instituto de Biología Universidad de Antioquia Medellín Colombia

Institut National de Recherche en Sciences Exactes et Naturelles Brazzaville République du Congo

Institute of Vertebrate Biology Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czech Republic

Laboratoire d'Herpétologie Département de Biologie Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles Lwiro Democratic Republic of the Congo

Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science Berlin Germany

Museum of Vertebrate Zoology University of California Berkeley CA USA

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Raleigh NC USA

Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences Brussels Belgium

Section of Freshwater Biology Department of Biology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark

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