No abstract

for providing infrastructure facilities. Anushree Jadhav is thankful to Dr. Narahari P. Gramapurohit for encouragement and support.

Abstract:Widely distributed species often show interpopulation variation. Studying such variations can be helpful in understanding contributing factors and distinguishing widespread species and species complexes. We studied six populations of Hylarana malabarica distributed along the northern Western Ghats of India using morphometric and genetic analysis. Of 24 size-adjusted morphometric characters, 14 were significantly different among populations. Hierarchical clustering and discriminant analysis of morphometric characters suggested that the six populations form at least four distinct clusters. Analysis of morphometric data was supported by genetic polymorphism data obtained by the Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method. Since the similarity and variation observed among populations was independent of their spatial distribution, it is possible that this widely-distributed species may be a species complex.

Funding sources had no role in study design, data collection, results interpretation and manuscript writing.For Author Contribution and Author Details see end of this article. is also thankful to the staff at MNHN for their kind help. We are thankful to Joseph Martinez, Herpetology section, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, for photographs of Hydrophylax leptoglossa syntypes. We are also thankful to Bartosz Borczyk, Natural History Museum, Wroclaw University, for helping ADP and NM with examination of a specimen of Hydrophylax gracilis. We also thank Dr. P.S. Bhatnagar, officer-in-charge, and Dr. Shrikant Jadhav, Zoological Survey of India, Western Regional Center (ZSI-WRC), Pune, for their help in registering specimens in ZSI-WRC. We are thankful to Dr. Sanjay Molur and Keerthi Krutha for helping in registration of specimens in the Wildlife Information Liaison Development (WILD), Coimbatore. We are also thankful to