New frog — and a sub-family — discovered in India’s Western Ghats

One more new frog species has been spotted in the Western Ghats of India, reconfirming the region’s status as home to one of the richest assemblage of frogs in the world.

Photo credit: S P Vijaykumar for the report in Mongabay India

The scientists have named the frog Astrobatrachus kurichiyana. Astrobatrachus is in recognition of its starry spots and kurichiyana in honour of the ‘Kurichiya’ indigenous community of Wayanad in Kerala, where the scientists stumbled upon this new species, a release from Indian Institute of Science, whose scientists were part of the team, says. As of now, this species is known only from the Kurchiyarmala peak, an isolated hill range located on the western edge of Wayanad plateau in the south-central region of the Western Ghats’ steep slope.

Details of the new frog, a secretive being that remains below leaf litters under the thick tree canopy of the shola forests in the region, are published by an international team from India and U.S. in the latest issue of PeerJ. The Western Ghats, one of India’s richest biodiversity hotspots, with at least three endemic frog families, have been throwing up several new frog species and even new genera, in the last decade. But it is rare that scientists additionally report an entire new sub-family of frogs, as has happened with this new frog. Molecular analysis by the scientists suggests that the most recent common ancestor of this new species would have diversified around 60 to 70 million years ago.

“The Western Ghats hosts a rich diversity of frog species, many of which have been discovered in the past 20 years. This particular new species is exciting because it represents a very distinct, and likely very old, lineage that we did not know existed,” David Blackburn, Associate Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles, at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, and one of the authors of the paper, told Mongabay-India.

The scientists have assigned the new species to a new sub-family — Astrobatrachinae, whose closest relatives are Nycibatrachinae in the Western Ghats and Lankanectinae in Sri Lanka.

“Many of the new species described are often assigned to other genera or families that we already knew existed,” Blackburn explained. “Perhaps the most famous example of a “new lineage” is the “purple frog”, Nasikabatrachus that was described in 2003.”

While the frog is from peninsular India, its physical characteristics, especially the triangular finger and toe tips, most closely resemble frogs from South America and Africa.

Read  my full report in Mongabay India

New frog species discovered in biodiversity-rich Western Ghats