Two New Species of Cricket Frogs of the Genus &lt;I&gt;Fejervarya bolkay&lt;/I&gt;, 1915 (Anura: Dicroglossidae) from the Peninsular India

Prudhvi Raj,K P Dinesh,Niladri B Kar,Pratyush P Mohapatra,Sushil K Dutta,Abhijit Das

doi:10.26515/rzsi/v118/i1/2018/121436

Abstract

The Dicroglossidae frogs of genus Fejervarya Bolkay, 1915 are morphologically cryptic and represented by one of the widespread group of frogs across the tropical Asia comprising about 45 species. Being morphologically cryptic, taxonomic status for many of the species remains uncertain. Recent studies using integrative taxonomic approach have revealed the existence of many novel and hitherto undescribed species. Herewith, we describe two new species of Fejervarya viz. Fejervarya kalinga sp. nov. and Fejervarya krishnan sp. nov. from peninsular India having morphological and phylogenetic distinctness. Detailed morphological descriptions and comparisons with the known congeners along with their systematic relationship inferred from phylogenetic analyses are presented herein. Taxonomic problems within the genus for the peninsular India and the pattern of phylogenetic relationships are also presented.

Highlights

The Asian cricket frogs of genus Fejervarya Bolkay, 1915 is one of the speciose groups in the anuran family Dicroglossidae (Dubois, 1975; Das and Dutta, 1998) and currently consists of 45 species distributed in South and South East Asia (Frost, 2018)
Live photographs were taken within 30 minutes of collection of the samples and the fixed specimen pho tographs were taken in the laboratory before depositing in the museum
Systematic Accounts Both the new species is assignable to the genus Fejervarya Bolkay, 1915 based on the morphological characters and phylogenetic position within the ‘Fejervarya clade’ (Dinesh et al, 2015) (Figure 2)

Summary

Introduction

The Asian cricket frogs of genus Fejervarya Bolkay, 1915 is one of the speciose groups in the anuran family Dicroglossidae (Dubois, 1975; Das and Dutta, 1998) and currently consists of 45 species distributed in South and South East Asia (Frost, 2018) Members of this genus can be diagnosed from the rest of Dicroglossid frogs by presence of fejervaryan lines on both sides on the ventrolateral sides. Mainly because of the conserved external morphological attributes (Dubois, 1987; Toda et al 1998; Chanda, 2002; Daniels, 2005; Kuramoto et al, 2007; Garg and Biju, 2017), these frogs are generally difficult to identify based on only morphological characters and identification of this group currently aided by acoustic as well as genetic analysis (Dutta and Manamendra-Arachchi, 1996; Dutta and Singh, 1996; Matsui et al, 2007). The systematics of these frogs has undergone many revisions in the last few years (Fei et al, 2002; Frost et al, 2006; Howlader, 2011; Ohler et al, 2014; Dinesh et al, 2015)

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Conclusion