Abstract
We describe a new species of the genus Leptobrachium from the Gaoligongshan Mountain Range, Yunnan Province of China based on molecular and morphological evidences. The new species, Leptobrachium tengchongense sp. nov., can be distinguished from its congeners by a combination of the following characters: (1) relatively small size (adult males SVL 41.7–51.5 mm); (2) head width slightly larger than head length; (3) tympanum indistinct; (4) two palmar tubercles oval and distinct, inner one larger than outer one; (5) sexually active males without spines on the upper lip; (6) dorsal skin smooth with distinct network of ridges; (7) dorsum pinkish grey and scattered with irregular black markings; (8) venter dark purplish-gray with numerous small white spots on tubercles, solid white chest; (9) iris bicolored, upper one-third light blue, lower two-third dark brown. With the description of the new species, the number of Leptobrachium species currently known from China adds up to ten.
References
Bain, R.H., Nguyen, T.Q. & Doan, K.V. (2009) First record of Leptobrachium promustache from Vietnam. Herpetology Notes, 2, 27–29.
Bourret, R. (1937) Notes herpétologiques sur l’Indochine française. XIV. Les batraciens de la collection du Laboratoire des Sciences Naturelles de l’Université. Descriptions de quinze especes ou variétés nouvelles. Annexe au Bulletin Général de l'Instruction Publique, Hanoi, pp. 5–56.
Brown, R.M., Siler, C.D., Diesmos, A.C. & Alcala, A.C. (2009) Philippine frogs of the genus Leptobrachium (Anura; Megophryidae): phylogeny-based species delimitation, taxonomic review, and descriptions of three new species. Herpetological Monographs, 23 (1), 1–44.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1655/09-037.1Chaplin, G. (2005) Physical geography of the Gaoligong Shan Area of southwest China in relation to biodiversity. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 56 (28), 527–556.
Darriba, D., Taboada, G.L., Doallo, R. & Posada, D. (2012) jModelTest 2: more models, new heuristics and parallel computing. Nature Methods, 9 (8), 772.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2109Dubois, A. (1995) Keratodont formulae in anuran tadpoles: proposals for a standardization. Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, 33, 1–15.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0469.1995.tb00947.xDubois, A. & Ohler, A. (1998) A new species of Leptobrachium (Vibrissaphora) from northern Vietnam, with a review of the taxonomy of the genus Leptobrachium (Pelobatidae, Megophyinae). Dumerilia, 4, 1–32.
Dumbacher, J.P., Miller, J., Flannery, M.E. & Yang, X. (2011) Avifauna of the Gaoligong Shan Mountains of western China: A hotspot of avian species diversity. Ornithological Monographs, 70, 30–63.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/om.2011.70.1.30Fei, L., Hu, S.Q., Ye, C.Y. & Huang, Y.Z. (2009) Fauna Sinica. Amphibia Vol. 2 Anura. Science Press, Beijing, 957 pp. [In Chinese]
Fei, L., Ye, C.Y. & Jiang, J.P. (2012) Colored atlas of Chinese amphibians and their distributions. Sichuan Publishing House of Science & Technology, Chengdu, 619 pp. [In Chinese]
Fei, L., Ye, C.Y., Huang, Y.Z., Jiang, J.P. & Xie, F. (2005) An illustrated key to Chinese amphibians. Sichuan Publishing House of Science and Technology, Chongqing, 340 pp. [In Chinese]
Frost, D.R. (2016) Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 6.0. Electronic Database. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. Available from: http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/index.html (accessed 10 April 2016)
Gosner, K.L. (1960) A simplified table for staging anuran embryos and larvae with notes on identification. Herpetologica, 16 (3), 183–190.
Guo, K. & Deng, X. (2009) A new species of Pareas (Serpentes: Colubridae: Pareatinae) from the Gaoligong Mountains, southwestern China. Zootaxa, 2008, 53–60.
Hamidy, A. & Matsui, M. (2010) A new species of blue-eyed Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) from Sumatra, Indonesia. Zootaxa, 2395, 34–44
Lathrop, A., Murphy, R.W., Orlov, N.L. & Ho, C.T. (1998) Two new species of Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) from the central highlands of Vietnam with a redescription of Leptobrachium chapaense. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 5 (1), 51–60.
Liu, C.C. (1945) New frogs from West China. Journal of the West China Border Research Society, Series B 15, 28–44.
Matsui, M. (2013) A New Leptobrachium (Vibrissaphora) from Laos (Anura: Megophryidae). Current Herpetology, 32 (2), 182–189.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5358/hsj.32.182Matsui, M., Hamidy, A., Murphy, R.W., Khonsue, W., Yambun, P., Shimada, T., Ahmad, N., Belabut, D.M. & Jiang, J.P. (2010) Phylogenetic relationships of megophryid frogs of the genus Leptobrachium (Amphibia, Anura) as revealed by mtDNA gene sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 56 (1), 259–272.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2010.03.014Matsui, M., Nabhitabhata, J. & Panha, S. (1999) On Leptobrachium from Thailand with a description of a new species (Anura: Pelobatidae). Japanese Journal of Herpetology, 18 (1), 19–29.
Ohler, A., Teynié, A. & David, P. (2004) A green-eyed Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) from southern Laos. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 52 (2), 695–700.
Orlov, N.L. (2005) A new species of the genus Vibrissaphora Liu, 1945 (Anura: Megophryidae) from Mount Ngoc Linh (Kon Tum Province) and analysis of the extent of species overlap in the fauna of amphibians and reptiles of the north-west of Vietnam and central highland. Russian Journal of Herpetology, 12 (1), 17–38.
Rambaut A, Suchard M.A., Xie, D. & Drummond, A.J. (2014) Tracer v1.6, Available from: http://beast.bio.ed.ac.uk/Tracer (Accessed 9 Aug. 2016)
Rao, D.Q. & Wilkinson, J.A. (2008) Phylogenetic relationships of the mustache toads inferred from mtDNA sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 46 (1), 61–73.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2007.10.005Rao, D.Q., Wilkinson, J.A. & Zhang, M.W. (2006) A new species of the genus Vibrissaphora (Anura: Megophryidae) from Yunnan Province, China. Herpetologica, 62 (1), 90–95.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1655/05-05.1Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., van der Mark, P., Ayres, D.L., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology, 61 (3), 539–542.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029Savage, J.M. (1975) Systematics and distribution of the Mexican and Central American stream frogs related to Eleutherodactylus rugulosus. Copeia, 254–306.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1442883Simon, C., Frati, F., Beckenbach, A., Crespi, B., Liu, H. & Flook, P. (1994) Evolution, weighting, and phylogenetic utility of mitochondrial gene sequences and a compilation of conserved polymerase chain reaction primers. Annals of the entomological Society of America, 87 (6), 651–701.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aesa/87.6.651Sondhi, S. & Ohler, A. (2011) A blue-eyed Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) from Arunachal Pradesh, India. Zootaxa, 2912, 28–36.
Stamatakis, A. (2014) RAxML Version 8: A tool for phylogenetic analysis and post-analysis of large phylogenies. Bioinformatics, 30 (9), 1312–1313.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btu033Stuart, B.L., Phimmachak, S., Seateun, S. & Sivongxay, N. (2012) A new Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) from the highlands of southeastern Laos. Zootaxa, 3155, 29–37.
Stuart, B.L., Rowley, J.J., Tran, D.T.A., Le, D.T.T. & Hoang, H.D. (2011) The Leptobrachium (Anura: Megophryidae) of the Langbian Plateau, southern Vietnam, with description of a new species. Zootaxa, 2804, 25–40.
Stuart, B.L., Sok, K. & Neang, T. (2006) A collection of amphibians and reptiles from hilly eastern Cambodia. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 54 (1), 129–155.
Tamura, K., Stecher, G., Peterson, D., Filipski, A. & Kumar, S. (2013) MEGA6: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 6.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30 (12), 2725–2729.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst197Thompson, J., Higgins, D. & Gibson, T. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignments through sequence weighting, position specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22, 4673–4680.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673Wogan, G.O. (2012) A new species of Leptobrachium from Myanmar (Anura: Megophryidae). Zootaxa, 3415 (1), 23–36.
http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3415.1.2Yang, J.H., Wang, Y.Y., Chen, G.L. & Rao, D.Q. (2016) A new species of the genus Leptolalax (Anura: Megophryidae) from Mt. Gaoligongshan of western Yunnan Province, China. Zootaxa, 4088 (3), 379–394.
http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4088.3.4Zhang, M., Rao, D., Yang, J., Yu, G. & Wilkinson, J.A. (2010) Molecular phylogeography and population structure of a mid-elevation montane frog Leptobrachium ailaonicum in a fragmented habitat of southwest China. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 54 (1), 47–58.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2009.10.019Zheng, Y., Li, S. & Fu, J. (2008) A phylogenetic analysis of the frog genera Vibrissaphora and Leptobrachium, and the correlated evolution of nuptial spine and reversed sexual size dimorphism. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 46 (2), 695–707.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2007.09.019