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Species boundaries of Microhyla rubra of India and Sri Lanka were assessed using the following criteria: genetic barcoding, morphology, and vocalization. We use a ca. 500 bp fragment of the 16S rRNA mitochondrial gene and show that there is an uncorrected pairwise distance of 2.7-3.2% between the Indian and Sri Lankan populations of M. rubra. We show that they are different in several call characteristics such as, dominant frequency, call duration, call rise time and pulse rate. Morphologically, the Sri Lankan population can be distinguished from the typical M. rubra described from southern India, by a combination of characters: body size, skin texture, and feet dimensions. We recognize the population from Sri Lanka as a new species, Microhyla mihintalei sp. nov., a widely distributed lowland species with an elevational distribution of up to 500 m a.s.l.

The success of any organization depends considerably on the standard of its human capital. Training is a more powerful weapon among Human Resource Management practices, which helps to develop knowledge and skills of employees in an organization. The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of training on operational level employees’ performance in a selected apparel organization in Sri Lanka. Through the analysis of 60 responses of randomly selected sample of machine operators; it shows that there is a strong, positive and significant relationship between training and performance with the correlation value of 0.817.The result of regression analysis indicates that there is a significant positive impact of training content and operational factors on employee performance. Upgrading the training content and identifying the training requirements specifically with a proper training duration are some of the recommendations that the researchers are suggesting improving employee performance.

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Rapid Biodiversity Assessment approaches associated with focusing taxa have overcome many of the problems related to large scale surveys. This study examined the suitability of litter ants as a focusing taxon by checking whether diversity and species assemblages of litter ants reflect the overall picture of arthropod diversity and assemblages in leaf litter in two vegetation types: secondary forest and pine plantation in Upper Hanthana forest reserve, Sri Lanka. In each vegetation type, arthropods were sampled using three sampling methods (Winkler extraction, hand collection, and pitfall traps) along three 100 m line transects. From the two sites, 1887 litter ants (34 species) and 3488 litter arthropods (52 species) were collected. Species assemblages composition of both ants and other arthropods differed significantly between the two sites (ANOSIM, = 0.001) with both groups generating distinct clusters for the two sites (SIMPROF, = 0.001). But there was no significant correlation ( > 0.05) between abundance and richness of litter ants and those of other arthropods in both vegetation types. The overall finding suggests that the litter ants do not reflect the holistic picture of arthropod diversity and assemblages in leaf litter, but the quality of the habitat for the survival of all litter arthropods.