The Australasian frog family Ceratobatrachidae in China, Myanmar and Thailand: discovery of a new Himalayan forest frog clade.

ABSTRACT: In an effort to study the systematic affinities and specieslevel phylogenetic relationships of the enigmatic anurans variably assigned to the genera Ingerana or Limnonectes (family Dicroglossidae), we collected new molecular sequence data for five species including four Himalayan taxa, Limnonectes xizangensis, Lim. medogensis, Lim. alpina, [corrected] Ingerana borealis and one southeast Asian species, I. tasanae, and analyzed these together with data from previous studies involving other ostensibly related taxa. Our surprising results demonstrate unequivocally that Lim. xizangensis, Lim. medogensis and Lim. alpina [corrected] form a strongly supported clade, the sister-group of the family Australasian forest frog family Ceratobatrachidae. This discovery requires an expansion of the definit

SUBMITTER: Yan F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4834731 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature