Tuesday, November 14, 2017

[Herpetology • 2017] Gephyromantis tohatra • A New Species of Small Brown Frog (Anura: Mantellidae) from High Altitude on the Marojejy Massif, northeastern Madagascar


Gephyromantis (Duboimantis) tohatra
Scherz, Razafindrabe, Rakotoarison, Dixit, Bletz, Glaw & Vences, 2017


Abstract

Madagascar hosts a high diversity of small brown frogs. In this paper, we add another one by describing Gephyromantis (Duboimantistohatra sp. nov. The new species is a small brown mantellid frog discovered on a recent expedition to Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar. It is characterised, among other things, by its small size (snout-vent length ~33 mm), an orange to yellowish belly, two dorsolateral ridges, and a distinctive call composed of 7–10 pulsed notes. The new species occurs sympatrically with other members of the subgenus Duboimantis at high altitude (~1700 m above sea level), including its sister species G. schilfi from which it radically differs by advertisement call and by a substantial genetic divergence of 4.3% uncorrected pairwise distance in the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene. It thus joins the diverse assemblage of Gephyromantis species known from high altitudes on the mountain massifs of northern Madagascar.

Keywords: Amphibia, Anura, Mantellidae, Gephyromantis, Gephyromantis tohatra sp. nov., Gephyromantis schilfi, Gephyromantis tandroka


  
Mark D. Scherz, Jary H. Razafindrabe, Andolalao Rakotoarison, Nadi M. Dixit, Molly C. Bletz, Frank Glaw and Miguel Vences. 2017.  Yet Another Small Brown Frog from High Altitude on the Marojejy Massif, northeastern Madagascar (Anura: Mantellidae). Zootaxa. 4347(3); 572–582. DOI:  10.11646/zootaxa.4347.3.9