Researchers have found and described a brand new species of rainfrog of the Breviceps genus. The fossorial frog is one in every of 20 species of frog within the Breviceps genus, with most of them occurring in South Africa.
It’s totally different from its closest relative, Breviceps verrucosus, in that it has a distinct mouth place and the scale of its inside and outer metatarsal tubercles differ as nicely. It’s genetically totally different from others within the genus by 7.5 p.c uncorrected p-distance within the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene, the authors write of their examine.
Holotype male Breviceps batrachophiliorum sp. nov. (SAIAB 141902) from Boston, KwaZulu-Natal Province: a – dorsolateral view; b – anterior view; c – ventral view; d – posterior view, exhibiting heel to heel and vertebral strains; e – proper hand; f – left foot. Picture by Louis duPreez
Whereas Breviceps batrachophiliorum appears carefully like Breviceps verrucosus, its name is extra just like B. bagginsi. The frog’s name was first heard in November 1999 by Marius Burger within the South African city of Boston, KwaZulu-Natal. Burger heard three separate calls at three localities and all seemed like B. bagginsi, however no specimens had been discovered to substantiate the species. Burger consulted Les Minter and tentatively assigned the frog calls to that of B. bagginsi. The recordings had been by no means analyzed and no specimens had been collected on the time.
The Breviceps genus
In 2018, researchers Nick Evans, Dylan Leonard and Cormack Worth traveled to the identical city and picked up six male frogs that had been bigger and had been an unknown species. These frogs had been related in look to B. verrucosus however had a distinct frog name. This solid doubt within the Frog Atlas file of B. bagginsi established in 1999 at this location. Extra calls and video of the unknown frog species had been recorded in seven different localities. In all, 23 frog calls had been recorded and analyzed and the researchers decided that this was a brand new species based mostly on the frog calls, bodily evaluation and molecular, DNA and RNA evaluation.
The examine, “A brand new Rain Frog (Anura: Brevicipitidae; Breviceps) from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, South Africa” might be learn on the African Journal of Herpetology web site.
