Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis (Schneider, 1799)

English Names

Studded Frog (Shaw, 1802, Gen. Zool., 3(1): 111).

Small Spotted Frog (Kelaart, 1853, Prodr. Faunae Zeylan., 1: 192).

Skittering Frog (Minton, 1966, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 134: 56; Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 79; Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 179; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 13).

Skettering Frog (Khan, 1979, Biologia, Lahore, 25: 43).

Skipping Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 122).

Skipper Frog (de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 67).

Cyan Five-fingered Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 99).

Indian Skipping Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 64; Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 179; Ahmed, Das, and Dutta, 2009, Amph. Rept. NE India: 35

Indian Skipper Frog (Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 26; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 3).

Skipper Frog (Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 98; Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 179).

Seistan Skittering Frog (Euphlyctis cyanophyctis seistanica: Khan, 2002, Bull. Chicago Herpetol. Soc., 37: 160).

Spiny Skittering Frog (Euphlyctis cyanophyctis microspinulata: Khan, 2002, Bull. Chicago Herpetol. Soc., 37: 160).

Water Skipping Frog (Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 80).

Water Skipper (Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 179).

Green Stream Frog (Nutphund, 2001, Amph. Thailand: 107).

Green Wart Frog (Nguyen, Ho, and Nguyen, 2005, Checklist Amph. Rept. Vietnam: 20).

Distribution

Pakistan, and India at low to moderate elevations from Punjab south to Kerala and east  and southern India to western Myanmar (Chin, Magway, Mandalay, Rakhine, Sagaing) to the Ayeyarwady River; Sri Lanka; arguably from central Iran (Sistan and Baluchestan Provinces) and Nepal (see comment); dubiously from Thailand and Minh Hai Province, Vietnam (see comment).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

Likely/Controversially Present: Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam

Comment

Older literature (prior to about 2022) probably applies to multiple species and should be employed cautiously. See accounts by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 12; Bourret, 1942, Batr. Indochine: 237–239, Kirtisinghe, 1957, Amph. Ceylon: 29–32, and Dutta and Manamendra-Arachchi, 1996, Amph. Fauna Sri Lanka: 112–116. See also Murthy, 1968, J. Univ. Poona, 34: 63–71. See comment under Euphlyctis ehrenbergi. Biju, 2001, Occas. Publ. Indian Soc. Conserv. Biol., 1: 10, reported this species from the Western Ghats of southwestern India. Choudhury, Hussain, Buruah, Saikia, and Sengupta, 2002, Hamadryad, 26: 278, noted the presence of this species in Assam, India. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 98–103, provided a brief account (as Rana cyanophlyctis). See brief account and photo by Manthey and Grossmann, 1997, Amph. Rept. Südostasiens: 89. Ray, 1999, Mem. Zool. Surv. India, 18: 33–35, provided an account. Orlov, Murphy, Ananjeva, Ryabov, and Ho, 2002, Russ. J. Herpetol., 9: 86, provided the Vietnam record, although this requires confirmation. Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 221–228, provided an account for the Nepal population, although these records likely apply to Euphlyctis adolfi. See brief account by Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 80–81, although presence in that country is rejected by recent authors. Taylor, 1962, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 43: 365–378, considered the species part of the fauna of Thailand, but indicated that it might be introduced. Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 83–84, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. Khan, 2006, Amph. Rept. Pakistan: 56–58, provided an account for Pakistan, although this may also address what is now Euphlyctis adolfi. Nutphund, 2001, Amph. Thailand: 107, provided a brief characterization and photograph (which Ohler, 2003, Alytes, 21: 101, regarded as not identifiable beyond the level of Limnonectes). Baloutch and Kami, 1995, Amph. Iran: 160–165, provided an account (as Rana cyanophlyctis) for Iran. Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 114–116, provided distribution, systematic comments, and partial bibliography. Ao, Bordoloi, and Ohler, 2003, Zoos' Print J., 18: 1117–1125, provided a specific locality for Nagaland, northeastern India. Chakravorty, Borah, and Bordoloi, 2002, Bull. Life Sci., India, 10: 47–54, described larval morphology at Gosner stage 38 from a population in Assam, India. Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 179–182, provided an account for peninsular India. Sarkar and Ray, 2006, In Alfred (ed.), Fauna of Arunachal Pradesh, Part 1: 297–298, provided a brief report for Arunachal Pradesh. Devi and Shamungou, 2006, J. Exp. Zool. India, 9: 317–324, provided a record (as Occidozyga cyanophlyctis) for Manipur, northeastern India. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, cited several larval descriptions of varying levels of completeness in the literature. Alam, Igawa, Khan, Islam, Kuramoto, Matsui, Kurabayashi, and Sumida, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 48: 515–527, suggested on the basis of molecular data that more than one species is masquerading under this name, with the name Rana bengalensis likely being available for the Bangladeshi population, although this was rejected by Howlader, Nair, Gopalan, and Merilä, 2015, PLoS One, 10(2: e0116666): 1–13, who named the Bengal population as Euphlyctis kalasgramensis (now a synonym of Euphlyctis adolfi). Ahmed, Das, and Dutta, 2009, Amph. Rept. NE India: 35, provided a brief account for northeastern India. Wogan, Vindum, Wilkinson, Koo, Slowinski, Win, Thin, Kyi, Oo, Lwin, and Shein, 2008, Hamadryad, 33: 86, discussed the dubiousness of previous records for Myanmar but provided a record for Rakhine state, Myanmar, close to the Bangladesh border. Kuramoto and Joshy, 2008, J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 105: 14–18, described the advertisement call from a population in Karnataka, India. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 26–27, provided a brief characterization and photographs. Mahony, Hasan, Kabir, Ahmed, and Hossain, 2009, Hamadryad, 34: 80–94, reported the species from Chittagong and Dhaka divisions, Bangladesh. de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 67, provided a brief account and color photograph for Sri Lanka. Bopage, Wewelwala, Krvavac, Jovanovic, Safarek, and Pushpamal, 2011, Salamandra, 47: 173–177, reported the species in lowland forest in the Kanneliya Forest of southwestern Sri Lanka. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 52, for brief account for Nepal (although this may apply to Euphlyctis adolfi). Hasan, Islam, Khan, Alam, Kurabayashi, Igawa, Kuramoto, and Sumida, 2012, Zool. Sci., Tokyo, 29: 162–172, discussed the possibility of cryptic species, recognized on the basis of molecular evidence. Wangyal, 2013, J. Threatened Taxa, 5: 4776, provided a record from Bhutan (although this may be based on Euphlyctis adolfi). Masroor, 2012, Contr. Herpetol. N. Pakistan: 55–58, provided an account for northern Pakistan (although this may apply to Euphlyctis adolfi). Khajeh, Mohammadi, Ghorbani, Meshkani, Rastegar-Pouyani, and Torkamanzehi, 2014, Acta Herpetol., Firenze, 9: 159–166, reported on mtDNA differentiation across the range and documented candidate lineages and suggested that populations in South India and Sri Lanka should be referred to Eyphlyctis mudigere. Records for Bangladesh have been reassigned to Euphlyctis kalasgramensis (now Euphlyctis adolfi) by Howlader, Nair, Gopalan, and Merilä, 2015, PLoS One, 10(2: e0116666): 1–13, although the limits of that taxon, which clearly must extend into India, have not been documented. Sivaprasad, 2013, Common Amph. Kerala: 42–43, provided a brief account, photograph, and dot map for Kerala. Safaei-Mahroo, Ghaffari, Fahimi, Broomand, Yazdanian, Najafi-Majd, Hosseinian Yousefkani, Rezazadeh, Hosseinzadeh, Nasrabadi, Mashayekhi, Motesharei, Naderi, and Kazemi, 2015, Asian Herpetol. Res., 6: 257–290, reported on distribution and conservation status in Iran.  Subba, Aravind, and Ravikanth, 2016, Check List, 13(1: 2033): 12, considered the presence of this species in Sikkim, India, to be doubtful. See localities and range map for Afghanistan by Wagner, Bauer, Leviton, Wilms, and Böhme, 2016, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 63: 457–565. Roy, Begum, and Ahmed, 2019, J. Threatened Taxa, 10: 12943–12944, discussed the range in Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India, and provided localities. O'Connell, Aryal, Sherchan, Dhakal, Chaudhary, and Karmacharya, 2019, J. Nat. Hist., London, 53: 1421–1437, reported on the Kathmandu Valley population, Nepal (presumably based on Euphlyctis adolfi; see below). Deuti, Sethy, and Ray, 2014, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 114: 127–128, provided a  brief account for the population of Odhisa and Andhra Pradesh, India. Tshewang and Letro, 2018, J. Threatened Taxa, 10: , reported the species from Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park in central Bhutan. Purkayastha, Khan, and Roychoudhury, 2020, in Roy et al. (eds.), Socio-economic and Eco-biological Dimensions in Resource use and Conservation, Environmental Science and Engineering: 225–233, provided a record for Rowa Wildlife Sanctuary, Tripura, India. Ahmad and Mim, 2020, IRCF Rept. & Amph., 27: 36–41, reported specimens from the Bandarban District, southeastern Bangladesh.  Sreekumar and Dinesh, 2020, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 120: 33–40, discussed the range in Maharashtra, India, in terms of agro-climatic zones. Gorule, Gosavi, Kharat, and Verma, 2020, J. Threatened Taxa, 12: 16136–16142, described the osteology for a population in the Western Ghats of South India. Prasad, Gautam, Gupta, Murthy, Ramesh, Shinde, and Das, 2020, Zootaxa, 4851: 450–476, reported on morphology and advertisement call for a population in the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, central India. Gautam, Chalise, Thapa, and Bhattarai, 2020, IRCF Rept. & Amph., 27: 18–28, briefly discussed abundance and elevational range in the Ghandruk region of central Nepal (presumably based on Euphlyctis adolfi; see below). See comments by Hakim, Trageser, Ghose, Das, Rashid, and Rahman, 2020, Check List, 16: 1239–1268, who reported the species from Lawachara National Park, Sylhet Division, northeastern Bangladesh. Key to the species, synonymy, distribution (including map), and access to literature provided by Safaei-Mahroo and Ghaffari, 2020, Compl. Guide Amph. Iran: 1–331. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, did not accept this species as part of the Nepal fauna and implied that these records apply to Euphlyctus kalasgramensis (now Euphlyctis adolfi). Gayen, Dey, and Roy, 2021, Zoos' Print J., 36: 33–39, reported a record from Durgapur Subdivision, West Bengal, India. The mtDNA tree provided by Akram, Rais, López-Hervas, Tarvin, Saeed, Bolnick, and Cannatella, 2021, Ecol. Evol., 11: 14186, suggests that at least some of the Iran records of Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis may apply to Euphlyctis kalasgramensis (now Euphlyctis adolfi). Rais, Ahmed, Sajjad, Akram, Saeed, Hamid, and Abid, 2021, ZooKeys, 1062: 157–175, included this species in an identification key to the amphibian species of Pakistan as well as providing a photograph. Zug, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 653: 16–17, discussed identification, habitat, and range in Myanmar. Srinivasulu and Kumar, 2022, J. Threatened Taxa, 14: 21268, reported the species from the state of Telangana, south-central India. Dufresnes, Mahony, Prasad, Kamei, Masroor, Khan, Al-Johany, Gautam, Gupta, Borkin, Melnikov, Rosanov, Skorinov, Borzée, Jablonski, and Litvinchuk, 2022, Syst. Biodiversity, 20 (2102686): 1–25, discussed the systematics of this species and its phylogenetic place within the genus, suggesting that the nomenclatural placement of Rana leschenaultii Dumeril and Bibron, 1841, and Rana bengalensis Gray, 1830, which may apply to other cryptic species; Rana cyanophlyctis var. seistanica Nikolskii, 1899, may apply to Euphlyctis adolfi, as might Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis microspinulata Khan, 1997. Rabbe, Jaman, Alam, Rahman, and Sarker, 2022, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 16: 226–234, provided records for northwestern Bangladesh. Raj, Vasudevan, Aggarwal, Dutta, Sahoo, Mahapatra, Sharma, Janani, Kar, and Dubois, 2023, Alytes, 39–40: 19–22, reported on larval morphology of genetically confirmed specimens from Andhra Pradesh, India.  Reported from central and northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, northern Pakistan by Majid, Azim, Nawaz, and Ud Din, 2023, Asian J. Res. Zool., 6: 56.

Euphlyctis mudigere was thought to be the sister taxon of Euphlyctis hexadactylus according to the original publication, where morphometrics, description of the morphology, molecular markers, and the advertisement call were covered. Subramanian, Dinesh, and Radhakrishnan, 2013, Atlas of Endemic Amph. W. Ghats: 43, provided a very brief characterization, photograph, and dot map of nominal Euphlyctis mudigere. Khajeh, Mohammadi, Ghorbani, Meshkani, Rastegar-Pouyani, and Torkamanzehi, 2014, Acta Herpetol., Firenze, 9: 159–166, suggested that South India and Sri Lankan populations of nominal Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis actually refer to Euphlyctis mudigere, although that species was subsequently placed into the synonymy of Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis by Dinesh, Channakeshavamurthy, Deepak, Ghosh, and Deuti, 2021, Zootaxa, 4990: 329, on the basis of mtDNA similarity. These authors also noted that, on the basis of mtDNA analysis, nominal Euphlyctis seistanica of Iran may require resurrection from synonymy and that several unnamed lineages remain in Sri Lanka, the Gangetic Plain of eastern India, and the western coastal plains of peninsular India. Poyarkov, Nguyen, Popov, Geissler, Pawangkhanant, Neang, Suwannapoom, and Orlov, 2021, Russ. J. Herpetol., 28 (3A): 21–22, considered records from Vietnam and elsewhere in Indochina are dubious and likely based on misidentifications.  

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