Abstract
We describe a new species of minute, terrestrial-breeding frog in the genus Noblella. We collected a single specimen in the leaf litter of primary montane forest (2,225 m a.s.l.) near Thiuni, in the Provice of Carabaya, Department of Puno, in the upper watershed of a tributary of the Inambari River of southern Peru, the same locality where we found the types of Psychrophrynella glauca Catenazzi & Ttito 2018. We placed the new species within Noblella on the basis of molecular data, minute size, and overall morphological resemblance with the type species N. peruviana and other species of Noblella, including having three phalanges on finger IV (as in N. coloma, N. heyeri, N. lynchi, N. madreselva, N. peruviana, and N. pygmaea), and terminal phalanges T-shaped and pointed. Noblella thiuni sp. n. is distinguished from all other species of Noblella by having ventral surfaces of legs bright red, and chest and belly copper reddish with a profusion of silvery spots. The new species further differs from known Peruvian species of Noblella by the combination of the following characters: tympanic membrane absent, eyelids lacking tubercles, dorsal skin finely shagreen, tarsal tubercles or folds absent, three phalanges on Finger IV, tips of digits not expanded, no circumferential grooves on digits, inguinal spots present. The new species has a snout–vent length of 11.0 mm in one adult or subadult male. Our new finding confirms the high levels of endemism and beta diversity of small, terrestrial-breeding frogs inhabiting the moss layers and leaf litter in the montane forests of the Amazonian slopes of the Andes and adjacent moist puna grasslands, and suggests much work remains to be done to properly document this diversity.
Highlights
The genus Noblella is distributed from Ecuador to Bolivia (Fig. 1; Catenazzi, Uscapi & von May, 2015), but there is uncertainty regarding the monophyly of the genus and the number of species (Catenazzi & Ttito, 2016; Catenazzi & Ttito, 2018; De la Riva et al, 2017)
We describe the species after considering the trade-off between a complex integrative approach to delimit the new species, and the need to accelerate the pace of taxonomic descriptions (De Carvalho et al, 2008; Guayasamin, Arteaga & Hutter, 2018; Padial et al, 2009), for micro-endemic taxa inhabiting threatened cloud forests such as many species of small strabomantid frogs
Similarity in meristic traits, and our present phylogeny showing N. thiuni sp. nov. as the sister taxon to all other species of sampled Noblella and Psychrophrynella, supports the idea that Psychrophrynella species may be nested within a larger Noblella clade
Summary
The genus Noblella is distributed from Ecuador to Bolivia (Fig. 1; Catenazzi, Uscapi & von May, 2015), but there is uncertainty regarding the monophyly of the genus and the number of species (Catenazzi & Ttito, 2016; Catenazzi & Ttito, 2018; De la Riva et al, 2017). We describe a new species of Noblella on the basis of a singleton (following terminology of Lim, Balke & Meier, 2012) found in the leaf litter of a cloud forest remnant in the Cordillera de Carabaya, in the southern Peruvian department of Puno, along a tributary of the Inambari River. This specimen is unlike any of the previously described species of Noblella or of the morphologically similar Psychrophrynella. We describe the species after considering the trade-off between a complex integrative approach to delimit the new species, and the need to accelerate the pace of taxonomic descriptions (De Carvalho et al, 2008; Guayasamin, Arteaga & Hutter, 2018; Padial et al, 2009), for micro-endemic taxa inhabiting threatened cloud forests such as many species of small strabomantid frogs
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