St. Anthony’s College, ZSI researchers discover three new species of frogs

SHILLONG, March 4: The researchers from St. Anthony’s College, Shillong, and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have discovered three new species of cascades frogs in Arunachal Pradesh.
According to a statement, the findings of the same were published in the recent edition of the research journal, Records of the Zoological Survey of India.
All the three new frog species belong to the True Frog family Ranidae, and these cascades frogs are classified under the genus Amolops.
“These new species are named as Amolops chanakya, Amolops tawang and Amolops terraorchis, and these three species were collected earlier from three different locations of Arunachal Pradesh between 2018 and 2019. Wherein, Amolops chanakya was collected from Dirang, Amolops tawang was collected from Tawang, and Amolops terraorchis was collected from Sessa Orchid Sanctuary,” the statement said.
It may be mentioned that the team that made the discovery comprises Dr. MA Laskar of St. Anthony’s College, Shillong, Bhaskar Saikia and Dr. Bikramjit Sinha of ZSI, Shillong, and Dr. K. P. Dinesh and Shabnam Ansari of ZSI, Pune.
“While Amolops tawang is named simply based on the district in which this species was discovered, the name Amolops terraorchis literally refers to the one from ‘the land of orchids’ (terra=land, orchis=orchid, in Latin language), suggesting its discovery from Sessa Orchid Sanctuary, which is the first such protected landscape in the world dedicated to the conservation of orchid diversity,” the statement said.
Amolops chanakya, the third species, has been named after Chanakya, a fourth-century BCE scholar of India who was instrumental in the establishment of the Maurya Empire and the overthrow of the Nanda Empire of Pataliputra.
“In Science, naming a species after a person is usually considered as paying homage to his/her contribution to society. Hence, the name chosen to name the third species, Amolops chanakya, is the most interesting…It is indeed apt that a species is named after this great Indian polymath. ZSI is mandated to survey and inventorise the faunal diversity of India and as such, the findings of these new species are also a part of their regular research work,” the statement said.
“Although the species of Amolops are morphologically cryptic, wherein identification of species by morphology and colour alone is difficult, in the present study, DNA Barcoding tools are used to justify the new species designations. Adding to this, for the first time a phylogenetic tree for the species of Amolops from India has been provided, including the molecular data from the neighbouring country species,” it added.