Chrysopaa sternosignata (Murray, 1885)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Dicroglossidae > Subfamily: Dicroglossinae > Genus: Chrysopaa > Species: Chrysopaa sternosignata

Rana sternosignata Murray, 1885, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 5, 16: 120. Syntypes: "Kurrachee Municipal Museum", presumaby the Karachi Museum and likely now lost; Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 72, listed two syntypes in the BMNH (1947.2.1.21–22; formerly 1885.7.11.14–15, according to museum records) from Muleer and Quetta. Type localities: "Mulleer [= Malir] near Kurrachee [= Karachi]; Zandra and Quetta, in South Afghanistan" (all localities actually in Pakistan). The Malir locality doubted as being based on incorrectly identified specimens by Hofmann, Schmidt, Masroor, Borkin, Litvinchuk, Rödder, Vershinin, and Jablonski, 2023, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 198: 311. 

Rana (Rana) sternosignata — Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 8.

Rana (Paa) sternosignata — Dubois, 1975, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 324: 1098; Dubois, 1976, Cah. Nepal., Doc., 6: 24; Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 43.

Paa (Gynandropaa) sternosignata — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 319.

Nanorana sternosignata — Chen, Murphy, Lathrop, Ngo, Orlov, Ho, and Somorjai, 2005, Herpetol. J., 15: 239, by implication; Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 367.

Chrysopaa sternosignata — Ohler and Dubois, 2006, Zoosystema, 28: 780.

English Names

Baluch Mountain Frog (Minton, 1966, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 134: 57; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 3).

Malir Paa Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 103).

Murray's Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 65; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 12).

Karez Frog (Khan, 2002, Bull. Chicago Herpetol. Soc., 37: 161).

Distribution

Sulaiman Mountains of western Pakistan north and west to the Hindu Kush and Paropamisus Mountains of Afghanistan. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Afghanistan, Pakistan

Comment

See accounts by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 71, and Khan, 2004, Bull. Chicago Herpetol. Soc., 39: 45–47. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 134–135, provided a brief account (as Rana sternosignata). Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 152–153, provided range for India and Pakistan, systematic comments, partial taxonomic bibliography, and doubted the Afghanistan records. Khan, 2006, Amph. Rept. Pakistan: 64–65, provided an account for Pakistan. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted several larval descriptions of varying levels of completeness in the literature (as Nanorana sternosignata). See localities and range map for Afghanistan by Wagner, Bauer, Leviton, Wilms, and Böhme, 2016, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 63: 457–565. 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. Hofmann, Schmidt, Masroor, Borkin, Litvinchuk, Rödder, Vershinin, and Jablonski, 2023, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 198: 310–325, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the species as well as providing a dot map of distribution, implying that Indian records are based on misidentifications. Hofmann, Masroor, and Jablonski, 2023, Herpetologica, 79: 128–134, provided a detailed description of tadpole morphology. 

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