Microhyla laterite sp. nov., A New Species of Microhyla Tschudi, 1838 (Amphibia: Anura: Microhylidae) from a Laterite Rock Formation in South West India

Abstract

In recent times, several new species of amphibians have been described from India. Many of these discoveries are from biodiversity hotspots or from within protected areas. We undertook amphibian surveys in human dominated landscapes outside of protected areas in south western region of India between years 2013–2015. We encountered a new species of Microhyla which is described here as Microhyla laterite sp. nov. It was delimited using molecular, morphometric and bioacoustics comparisons. Microhyla laterite sp. nov. appears to be restricted to areas of the West coast of India dominated by laterite rock formations. The laterite rock formations date as far back as the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary and are considered to be wastelands in-spite of their intriguing geological history. We identify knowledge gaps in our understanding of the genus Microhyla from the Indian subcontinent and suggest ways to bridge them.

A new species of Microhyla Tschudi, 1838 (Anura: Microhylidae) from West Coast of India: an integrative taxonomic approach

“…nov. differs from all the congeners from Southern India in the following characters. The new species differs from Microhyla laterite by having tuberculated skin on dorsum (vs. skin on dorsum is smooth), lacking horizontal band on dorsum (vs. black horizontal band on dorsum at the same plane as forelimbs), supratympanic fold strong (vs. moderate), lacking the lateral skin fold (vs. black lateral band starting above shoulder and terminating just before the groin) (Seshadri et al 2016a). From Microhyla sholigari, the new species differs by lacking the lateral skin fold (vs. black lateral band present from shoulder to groin), grayish-black throat in males (vs. buff colored with brown pigmentation), males larger in body size (SVL, males: 16.9-17.4 mm vs. 15.9-16.2 mm in M. sholigari), lacking marking on vent (vs. black triangular marking on vent) (Seshadri et al 2016b).…”

“…Studies on the genus Microhyla in the Indian subcontinent have been very narrow and limited. However, there are a handful of studies on this family that have been published in recent years (Seshadri et al 2016a;Howlader et al 2015;Poyarkov Jr et al 2014;Dutta and Ray 2000;Hasan et al 2014;Wijayathilaka et al 2016). As noted in previous publications (Seshadri et al 2016a;Howlader et al 2015), there might be several new species and new distributional records in Indian subcontinent.…”

“…A pairwise genetic distance matrix for 16S rRNA was calculated along with GenBank retrieved sequences (total 28 sequences) representing all previously known Microhyla species, in MEGA 6.0 (Tamura et al 2013) under Kimura-2-Parameter model. The phylogenetic tree was constructed from the 16S gene sequences with Uperodon variegatus as an outgroup (Seshadri et al 2016a), using GTR+I+G as the best-fit model selected by PartitionFinder 2.0 (Lanfear et al 2012). A phylogenetic tree was constructed by the Maximum likelihood (ML) with 1,000 thorough bootstrap replicates in RAxML 7.3.0 (Stamatakis 2006;Stamatakis et al 2008).…”

“…At the same time, discoveries from cosmopolitan families like Microhylidae, Dicroglossidae and Bufonidae and from the so-called 'species poor regions' such as coastal plains, Deccan Plateau and Eastern Ghats are relatively rare. However, contrary to popular notions, these groups and regions also harbor several species new to science as shown through several recent publications (Joshy et al 2009;Priti et al 2016;Seshadri et al 2016a).…”

“…In India, nine valid species have been described; of these, three are endemic (M. sholigari, M. laterite and M. chakrapanii) to the Indian political boundary and the remaining six have widespread distribution in South and Southeast Asia. About 11 new species of Microhyla have been described in the last seven years (Matsui 2011;Matsui et al 2013;Hasan et al 2014;Poyarkov Jr et al 2014;Howlader et al 2015;Seshadri et al 2016a;Wijayathilaka et al 2016;Khatiwada et al 2017).…”