Fejervarya sp. 'hp3' (Clade 11 of Kotaki et al. 2010)

Mulcahy, Daniel G., Lee, Justin L., Miller, Aryeh H., Chand, Mia, Thura, Myint Kyaw & Zug, George R., 2018, Filling the BINs of life: Report of an amphibian and reptile survey of the Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) Region of Myanmar, with DNA barcode data, ZooKeys 757, pp. 85-152 : 85

Fejervarya sp. 'hp3' (Clade 11 of Kotaki et al. 2010)

Description.

Adult females (n = 3) 32.3-38.5 mm, adult males (n = 4) 31.0-33.5 mm SVL.

Natural history notes.

These frogs occurred in a variety of human-modified habitats from drainage ditch to rice fields.

General Distribution.

Pilok, western Thailand, to Bago and Tanintharyi, Myanmar.

Molecular Data.

We included two individuals from Bago (USNM 587073, USNM 587076) that were related to our specimens. Our specimens were placed into two COIBINs, one for the Bago specimens (ADG3052) and one for the Tanintharyi specimens (ADG2768). We did not obtain COI sequence from one of our Tanintharyi specimens (USNM 586874), yet it was placed sister to the Bago specimens in our combined tree. All of our specimens were placed in a 16S clade with a specimen (AB277300) from GenBank identified as Fejervarya sp. ‘hp3’ Clade 11 of Kotaki et al. (2010). Thus, we refer to our specimens and this clade as Fejervarya sp. belonging to the ‘hp3,’ Clade 11 of Kotaki et al. (2010). This entire clade was placed sister to a specimen (AB488889) from the Andaman Islands, India identified as Fejervarya sp. ‘hp6.’ Clade 12 ( Kotaki et al. 2010).

Comments.

Our material extends the range of this clade from Bangkok, Thailand to Bago and the Tanintharyi, Myanmar. The Grassfrogs, Fejervarya limnocharis complex, has gone from a single species of widespread tropical Asian frog in the early 1950s to twenty plus species in 2008 ( Zug 2011) to double that number now. The number will likely continue to increase over the next decade. In Myanmar, two species commonly occur together as represented by our Tanintharyi vouchers. The sympatric species display non-overlapping size ranges between males and females of the two species, although the males of the larger species may overlap in size with that of the females of smaller species.

Specimens examined.

USNM 587073, USNM 587076, USNM 586873-879,

Red List status.

NE.

Additional Fejervarya .

We sequenced three specimens from Sagaing (USNM 520442, USNM 524007, USNM 537462) and one from Magway (USNM 587313) that were placed in one COIBIN, and were placed in a 16S clade with material in GenBank identified as Fejervarya sp. BFL 2007, large types 1-2 from Bangladesh ( Islam et al. 2008, Hasan et al. 2012a). These were placed sister to three F. orissaensis , from Odisha, India and are over 8% sequence divergence from the Fejervarya sp. hp2 clade for COI. To be consistent, we refer to these specimens as Fejervarya sp. BFL 2007, which extends this Bangladesh clade into Myanmar. We sequenced three additional specimens from Sagaing (USNM 520406, USNM 520417, USNM 520437) and one from Mandalay (USNM 587315) that were placed in two COIBINs, respectively. These specimens were placed in a 16S clade with a sequence in GenBank (AF206466) of a specimen (USNM 520407) collected from the same locality in Sagaing. This clade was placed sister to a clade consisting of two new species ( F. dhaka and F. asmati ) recently described from Bangladesh ( Howlader et al. 2016). We refer to our specimens as Fejervarya sp. A.