The maiden sighting of the polymorphic Sri Lankan brown-eared shrub frog has been reported in the Talakona forest of the Eastern Ghats, by a team of scientists and researchers from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh Biodiversity Board, in Zootaxa, an international journal published from New Zealand.
The sighting was made in September last year in the Talakona thickets of Seshachalam Biosphere Reserve by Bharath Bhupathi of ZSI’s Freshwater Biology Regional Centre, Hyderabad, and K.P. Dinesh of ZSI’s Western Regional Centre, Pune, and is published in Zootaxa’s July issue.
The same team had earlier discovered a Sri Lankan wetland frog species in the Koundinya forest of Chittoor district, also in the Eastern Ghats of the State. The consecutive discoveries of lesser-known Sri Lankan vertebrates in the Eastern Ghats sheds light on a larger issue — the scant documentation and understating of amphibian diversity in the Eastern Ghats, and the evolutionary history of land bridge connection between India and Sri Lanka in the past (Pleistocene period).
The shrub frog, scientifically known as Pseudophilautus regius, was spotted in Sri Lankan forests in 2005. After two decades, the species has been rediscovered from the Eastern Ghats of India with a disjunct distribution range of around 700 km aerially apart. Three species are reported from the Western Ghats, which are sister species to the Sri Lankan shrub frog. However, this is the first brown-eared shrub frog species to be reported from the Eastern Ghats in the two centuries of Indian amphibian research history.
Research on Eastern Ghats
The Eastern Ghats are known to have 28 species of amphibians, compared to 253 species in the Western Ghats and 455 species across India, indicating the need to understand the amphibian diversity of the Eastern Ghats.
In fact, there is a proposal by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, New Delhi, to establish a new regional centre at Amaravati to explore the faunal diversity from this region.
Published - July 15, 2024 07:14 pm IST
