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;Kumar, 2026, J. Entomol. Zool. Stud., 14: 67).

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 and central Nepal at lower elevations into India (Jharkhand, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland) and into Dagana District, Bhutan; reported from the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, and southeastern Rajasthan, central India, and Papikonda National Park, in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, 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. Borkin, Litvinchuk, and Melnikov, 2020, In M. F. Albedil and L. J. Borkin (eds.), Nepal: A view from Russia: 123–150, briefly discussed records from central Nepal. 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. Reported from Papikonda National Park, in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, India, by Bhupathi, Mohapatra, Narayana, Kunte, Jaiswal, and Kar, 2025, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 125: 255–276. Paul, Santrusallya, Boruah, Dutta, Somasundaram, and Das, 2025, Amph. Rept. Mukandra Hills Tiger Res.: 22, provided a photograph and brief account of natural history for the Mukandra Tiger Reserve, in the Vindhyan range, southeastern Rajasthan, India.  Warjri, Purkayastha, and Das, 2025, Nat. Hist. Sci., Milano, 12: 21–34, reported on the advertisement call in Meghalaya, India. Bhattarai, Gautam, Pokheral, and Kandel, 2025, J. Threatened Taxa, 17: 27594–27610, reported the species from Chitwan National Park, southern Nepal. Saha, Das, Patra, Mahapatra, Jena, Prakash, Mahapatra, Deuti, and Mohapatra, 2026, Check List, 22: 57–74, discussed genetically confirmed records for northeastern Jharkhand state, India.. Kumar, 2026, J. Entomol. Zool. Stud., 14: 64–72, reported on habitat in the Jamshedpur region of East Singhbhum district, southeastern Jharkhand, India. Bhattarai, Neupane, Gautam, Shrestha, Olson, Hogan, and Wright, 2026, J. Threatened Taxa, 18: 28807–28829, discussed the species in the protected areas of the Chitwan-Annapurna region of central Nepal.     

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