Abstract
A new species, Odorrana sangzhiensissp. nov., is described, based on five specimens from Sangzhi County, Zhangjiajie City, Hunan Province, China. Molecular phylogenetic analyses, based on mitochondrial 12S rRNA and 16S rRNA gene sequences, strongly support the new species as a monophyletic group nested into the O. schmackeri species complex. The new species can be distinguished from its congeners by a combination of the following characters: (1) body size medium (SVL: 42.1–45.1 mm in males, 83.3–92.7 mm in females); (2) dorsolateral folds absent; (3) tympanum diameter 1.53 times as long as the width of the disc of finger III in females; 2.3 times in males; (4) dorsal skin green with dense granules and sparse irregular brown spots; males with several large warts on dorsum; (5) two metacarpal tubercles; (6) relative finger lengths: I ≤ II < IV < III; (7) tibiotarsal articulation beyond the tip of the snout; (8) ventral surface smooth in females; throat and chest having pale spinules in adult males; (9) dorsal limbs green or yellow green with brown transverse bands; and (10) paired external vocal sacs located at corners of the throat, finger I with light yellow nuptial pad in males. This discovery increases the number of Odorrana species to 59 and those known from China to 37.
Highlights
The odorous frogs of the genus Odorrana Fei, Ye & Huang, 1990 are distributed in tropical and subtropical Asia, including southern mainland China, Japan and Indochina west to north-eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand and south through Malaya and Sumatra to Borneo
The uncorrected p-distances between the new taxon and all other species of the complex are 2.8%–9.8%, which were larger than the interspecific genetic distance between, for example, O. fengkaiensis and O. hainanensis, O. huanggangensis and O. tianmuii and O. nasuta and O. versabilis (Suppl. material 3)
The discovery of Odorrana sangzhiensis sp. nov. adds another species to the O. schmackeri species complex, indicating that the species diversity of Odorrana may be under-estimated
Summary
The odorous frogs of the genus Odorrana Fei, Ye & Huang, 1990 are distributed in tropical and subtropical Asia, including southern mainland China, Japan and Indochina west to north-eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand and south through Malaya and Sumatra to Borneo. There are 58 recognised species (Frost 2020). Seven species from the genus Odorrana have recently been described using both molecular and morphological analyses (Chen et al 2010a, b; Kuramoto et al 2011; Mo et al 2015; Wang et al 2015; Pham et al 2016; Li et al 2018a). The phylogeny and diversity of Odorrana and the systematic status of taxa within the genus have been debated by taxonomists (Frost et al 2006; Che et al 2007; Fei et al 2009a; Kurabayashi et al 2010; Chen et al 2013; Li et al 2015). Frost et al (2006) expanded the genus Huia to include both Odorrana and R. Chen et al (2013) used two mitochondrial genes to study the molecular phylogeny and diversity of Odorrana and they identified seven major clades
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