Minervarya pierrei (Dubois, 1975)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Dicroglossidae > Subfamily: Dicroglossinae > Genus: Minervarya > Species: Minervarya pierrei

Rana pierrei Dubois, 1975, C. R. Hebd. Séances Acad. Sci., Paris, 281: 1720. Holotype: MNHNP 1975.1680, by original designation. Type locality: "Birtamode, Est-Népal, alt. 200 m".

Rana (Euphlyctis) pierrei — Dubois, 1980 "1978", C. R. Séances Soc. Biogeogr., 55: 158.

Rana (Fejervarya) pierrei — Dubois, 1984, Alytes, 3: 149.

Euphlyctis pierrei — Poynton and Broadley, 1985, Ann. Natal Mus., 27: 124, by implication.

Limnonectes (Fejervarya) pierrei — Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 61.

Fejervarya pierrei — Iskandar, 1998, Amph. Java Bali: 71, by implication; Dubois and Ohler, 2000, Alytes, 18: 35; Fei, Ye, Jiang, and Xie, 2002, Herpetol. Sinica, 9: 92; Dinesh, Vijayakumar, Channakeshavamurthy, Torsekar, Kulkarni, and Shanker, 2015, Zootaxa, 3999: 79. 

Zakerana pierrei — Howlader, 2011, Bangladesh Wildl. Bull., 5: 2.

Minervarya pierrei — Sanchez, Biju, Islam, Hasan, Ohler, Vences, and Kurabayashi, 2018, Salamandra, 54: 115. 

Common Names

Pierre's Wart Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 100).

Pierre's Cricket Frog (Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 79; Ahmed, Das, and Dutta, 2009, Amph. Rept. NE India: 36; Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 32; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 4). 

Jhapa Frog (Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 57).

Pierrei Cricket Frog (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 4). 

Distribution

Rawalpindi District, Punjab Province, Pakistan; eastern Nepal at lower elevations into India (Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura, nd Nagaland) and into Dagana District, Bhutan; reported from the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, central India; northwestern and eastern Bangladesh.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan

Comment

See original publication for discussion of this species being confused with Fejervarya limnocharis. Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 247-249, provided an account for the Nepal population. Borthakur, Kalita, Hussain, and Sengupta, 2007, Zoos' Print J., 22: 2639-2643, compared the species of Assam, northwest India (Fejervarya nepalensis, Fejervarya pierrei, Fejervarya syhadrensis, and Fejervarya teraiensis). Ahmed, Das, and Dutta, 2009, Amph. Rept. NE India: 36, provided a brief account for northeastern India and who implied that the name applies to many of the populations in India previously allocated to Fejervarya limnocharis. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted no larval descriptions in the literature. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 32, provided a brief characterization and photographs. Rasel, Hannan, and Howlader, 2007, Bangladesh Wildl. Bull., 2007: 1-3, reported this species in the Chittagong region of eastern Bangladesh. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 57, for brief account (as Limnonectes pierrei) for Nepal. Wangyal, 2013, J. Threatened Taxa, 5: 4776, provided records from Dagana District, soutwest-central Bhutan. Bahuguna, 2013, Herpetol. Rev., 44: 620, provided a record (as Fejervarya pierrei) for Haryana, India, and commented on the range. Ahmad and Alam, 2015, Herpetol. Rev., 46: 559, provided a record for Nazipur, Naogaon Distrit, Rajshahi Division, Bangladesh. Köhler, Mogk, Khaing, and Than, 2019, Vert. Zool., Senckenberg, 69: 190, suggested that the distinctiveness from Minervarya granosa and Minervarya syhadrensis needs to be confirmed. Reported from extreme southwestern Nepal in the Shuklaphanta National Park by Rawat, Bhattarai, Poudyal, and Subedi, 2020, J. Threatened Taxa, 12: 11587. 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, this identification confirmed by genetic analysis. Chandramouli, Ankaiah, Arul, Dutta, and Ganesh, 2019, Asian J. Conserv. Biol., 8: 84–87, questioned the distinctiveness of this taxon from Minervarya agricola, but did not make any taxonomic recommendation. 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. 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. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, discussed the species in Nepal. Akram, Rais, López-Hervas, Tarvin, Saeed, Bolnick, and Cannatella, 2021, Ecol. Evol., 11: 14175–14216, provided genetically-confirmed records from Rawalpindi District, Punjab Province, Pakistan, as well as briefly discussing the systematics of the species; their tree suggests that the genetic distinctiveness of Minervarya pierrei and Minervarya syhadrensis requires confirmation (DRF). 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. Garg and Biju, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 345–370, summarized the systematics of Minervarya but did not address this species, suggesting that they regarded it as a junior synonym of Minervarya sahyadris or possibly some other taxon. 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: 27–30, reported on larval morphology of genetically-confirmed specimens from Odisha, India.  

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