A new species of the genus Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from Yunnan, China

Abstract

A new species of Pareas is described from Yunnan Province, China, based on morphological comparisons and molecular data. Genetically, the new species is most closely related to the recently-described Pareas geminatus, for which we present new topotypic findings. The genetic divergence (uncorrected p-distance) of the cytb gene between the new species and congeners ranged from 6.14% to 24.68%. Morphologically, the new species can be distinguished from P. geminatus and all other congeners. Our work brings the total number of species within the genus Pareas to 22.

A new species of Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from southern Vietnam

“…Comparative data for other species were taken from relevant publications (Boulenger 1900;Boulenger 1914;Malkmus et al 2002;Guo and Deng 2009;Stuebing et al 2014;Vogel 2015;You et al 2015;Bhosale et al 2020;Ding et al 2020;Suntrarachun et al 2020;Vogel et al 2020;Wang et al 2020;Liu and Rao 2021;Vogel et al 2021).…”

“…It differs from other pareid genera by having 15 rows of dorsal scales at midbody, divided subcaudals, suboculars, supralabials not touching the eye, no anterior single inframaxillary, and three pairs of inframaxillaries (Grossmann and Tillack 2003). The monophyly of Pareas with respect to other pareid genera has been recovered with statistical support in some studies (e.g., Ding et al 2020;, but not in others (e.g., Guo et al 2011;Pyron et al 2013;You et al 2015;Figueroa et al 2016;Liu and Rao 2021).…”

“…After 77 years without any descriptions of new species in the genus (from 1937 to 2014), seven new species have been described since 2015, mostly based on integrative taxonomic approaches incorporating molecular analyses and morphological comparisons (Liu and Rao 2021;Uetz et al 2021;Vogel et al 2021). These integrative taxonomic approaches have also clarified some taxonomic uncertainties in previously described species.…”

“…For example, recent studies have shown P. macularius Theobald, 1868 to be a species distinct from P. margaritophorus (Jan, 1866) (e.g., Hauser 2017;Suntrarachun et al 2020;Vogel et al 2020) following their synonymy by Huang (2004). To the contrary, Liu and Rao (2021) considered P. mengziensis, a new species very recently described by Wang et al (2020), to be conspecific with P. niger Pope, 1928 based on molecular and morphological data.…”

A new species of Nanorana Günther, 1896 (Anura, Dicroglossidae) from Yunnan, China

“…At the type locality we found three other species of amphibians: Chirixalus cf. doriae Boulenger, 1893;Raorchestes hillisi Jiang Ren, Guo, Wang & Li, 2020;Tylototriton verrucosus Anderson, 1871a; and three species of reptiles: Calotes emma Gray, 1845; Pareas xuelinensis Liu & Rao, 2021; and Pseudocalotes microlepis (Boulenger, 1887).…”