Saturday 18 April 2020

Bangladeshi scientist discover new frog species (Raorchestes rezakhani)

Hassan Al Razi discover new frog species in Bangladesh. scientific name: Raorchestes rezakhani, English Name: Bush frog. The 16S rRNA gene distinguished this species from 48 known species of this genus. Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood analyses indicated  that  the  new  species  was  most  similar  to  R.  tuberohumerus,  a  species  found  in  the  Western  Ghats, and to R. gryllus, a species found in Vietnam. Bioacoustics indicated that their calls were similar in pattern to most Raorchestes species, although number of pulses, duration of pulses, pulse intervals and amplitude differentiated it from a few other species. It is suggested that northeastern India, Bangladesh, northern Myanmar, and southern China represent important, relatively unexplored areas that could yield additional  species  of  Raorchestes.  Since  many  remaining  habitat  patches  in  Bangladesh  are  under  severe  threat from deforestation, efforts should be made to protect these last patches from further degradation.





Bangladesh falls within the Indo-Malayan realm, with forests classified as tropical moist, tropical evergreen and several other less-extensive forest types . Broad similarities exist between forest patches in north-eastern and southeastern Bangladesh and the surrounding Indian States of Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and Nagaland, and adjoining northern Myanmar and southern China.


Published on Zoo Keys 927(1):127-151 as entitle "A new species of cryptic Bush frog (Anura, Rhacophoridae, Raorchestes) from northeastern Bangladesh Launched to accelerate biodiversity research" DOI:10.3897/zookeys.927.48733