We present a first record for three species of frogs, viz. Amolops indoburmanensis, Euphlictys kalisgraminensis and Polypedates braueri in India based on DNA barcoding data. We also discussed on the records of Amolops spp. in Mizoram and delisted all previous recorded species, viz. A. afghanus, A. kaulbacki and A. marmoratus from the amphibian fauna of Mizoram until further research confirmed their presence, since the data were not sufficient enough for the confirmation of their occurrence and are likely based on misidentification of A. indoburmanensis.
undertaken to investigate the nesting behaviour of Indian Black Eagle Ictinaetus malayensis (Temminck, 1822). Observation sheets were made following Bald Eagle Monitoring Guidelines prepared for United States Fish and Wildlife Service-2007 with few modifications made to fit the necessities. Concealment nets were used to hide the observer in the observation post and other safety precautions were followed all through the monitoring process. Nikon P900, D7200, D500 fitted with a 200-500 mm lens were used for photography and Nikon Aculon A211 (15x50) binocular for observing the nest. The nest was observed for 85 days starting from early morning (0530 hrs) to evening (1730 hrs) by the observers in three shifts. The present study observed that the breeding season of I. malayensis begins from mid-December (aerial display) to February with the breeding pair building their nest on the branches placed horizontal to the branch of large old trees 25 m above the ground. The nests were 1-1.5 m in diameter and are lined with green leafy twig every alternate day while incubating and after each feed post-hatching. A single egg was laid and incubated for 30-35 days, young eagle need additional 50-60 days to fledge. We also observed that the diet solely consisted of rodents, especially the Pallas's Squirrel, Hoary-bellied Squirrel, snakes, lizards and rats. I. malayensis, a top predator in the evergreen montane forest of Mizoram, mainly feed on rodents, thus playing a very important role in controlling the rodent population, while no instance of village fowl killed by I. malayensis was not recorded either by the authors nor the villagers themselves. The breeding success rate may not be high as only one of the two nests observed was successful, therefore, conserving this majestic forest raptor is essential for maintaining a balance of the forest ecosystem in the hill state.
is held by the authors. Articles in R&A are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. D uring the breeding season, adult male anurans emit species-specific advertisement calls to attract conspecific females (Duellman and Trueb 1986;Wells 2007). Anurans distinguish mates through visual, chemical, or acoustic signals (e.g.,
Stoliczka (1870) described Hylorana nicobariensis from the Nicobar Islands of India. The generic allocation of this enigmatic species is yet to be fully resolved (Chan et al. 2020b) and it has been placed in different genera (Boulenger 1885; Frost et al. 2006; Che et al. 2007; Oliver et al. 2015; Chan et al. 2020a; Chandramouli et al. 2020). As of now, the species is assigned to the genus Indosylvirana (Oliver et al. 2015; Chan et al. 2020b; Frost 2020). Apart from Nicobar archipelago, this species is distributed in the insular regions of southeast Asia (Oliver et al. 2015; Chandramouli et al. 2020; Frost 2020) and the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram, Tripura and West Bengal in northeast India (Sarkar et al. 1992, 2002; Sarkar & Ray 2006; Ahmed et al. 2009; Mathew & Sen 2010; Lalremsanga 2011; Lalremsanga et al. 2015, 2016). However, Frost (2020) doubted the records of this species in northeast India. Systematic studies on the herpetofauna of northeast India based on molecular evidence are scanty (Lalronunga et al. 2020a), and species recorded from the area need confirmation (Frost 2020). Recent studies revealed that many species previously recorded from northeast India were based on misidentifications (Das et al. 2019; Giri et al. 2019; Lalronunga et al. 2020b), therefore, a review and revalidation on the herpetofaunal list of the area is warranted. Herein, we examined the identity of the species recorded as I. nicobariensis from northeast India using morphological data and a fragment of 16S rRNA mitochondrial gene.
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