Nanorana blanfordii (Boulenger, 1882)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Dicroglossidae > Subfamily: Dicroglossinae > Genus: Nanorana > Species: Nanorana blanfordii

Rana blanfordii Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 23. Syntypes: BMNH (2 specimens), BMNH 1880.11.10.105–106 by museum records of which one is illustrated on pl. 1, fig. 2 in the original publication; BMNH 1880.11.10.105 designated lectotype by Dubois, 1975, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 324: 1098. Type locality: "Muscat?"; corrected to "Darjeeling . . . in the Himalayas, at Mussoorie, at an altitude of 7000 to 8000 feet", West Bengal, India, by Boulenger, 1905, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 7, 16: 640.

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

Rana (Paa) blanfordii — Dubois, 1975, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 324: 1098; Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 43.

Rana yadongensis Wu In Sichuan Institute of Biology Herpetology Department, 1977, Acta Zool. Sinica, 23: 56, 62. Holotype: CIB 73II02138, by original designation. Type locality: "Yadong, Xizang [= Tibet], alt. 2900 m", China. Provisional synonymy with his Paa blanfordi by Dubois, 1979, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 48: 657–661 (who considered the paratypes to also include representatives of Paa polunini). Synonymy supported by Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 210; and Fei and Ye, 2001, Acta Zool. Sinica, 47: 476–478.

Paa (Paa) yadongensis — Fei, Ye, and Huang, 1990, Key to Chinese Amph.: 156; Ye, Fei, and Hu, 1993, Rare and Economic Amph. China: 272.

Paa (Paa) blanfordii — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 320.

Nanorana blanfordii — 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.

Chaparana (Paa) blanfordii — Ohler and Dubois, 2006, Zoosystema, 28: 781.

Paa blanfordii — Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Herpetol. Sinica, 12: 26.

Nanorana blandfordii — Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 14. Incorrect subsequent spelling.

Nanorana (Paa) blanfordii — Hofmann, Jablonski, Litvinchuk, Masroor, and Schmidt, 2021, PeerJ, 9 (e11793): 11.

Common Names

Blanford's Paa Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 102; Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 79).

Blanford's Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 65; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 30).

Blanford's Spiny Frog (Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 210; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 38).

Blanford's Hill Frog (Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 93; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 38; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 4).

Distribution

Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal in the Darjeeling region (India) and central and eastern Nepal, 1755–2930 m elevation; south-central Yadong, Tibet, China, along the Sikkim border; likely to be found in nearby western Bhutan.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: China, People's Republic of, India, Nepal

Likely/Controversially Present: Bhutan

Comment

Discussed by Dubois, 1976, Cah. Nepal., Doc., 6: 113. See accounts by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 83; and Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 210–211. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 93, provided a brief account (as Rana blanfordii). Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 83, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. Dubois, 2004, Alytes, 21: 175, noted that an illustration of this species (fig. 2, 265) by Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 265, fig. 2, is actually Ombrana sikimensis (as Chaparana). Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 150, provided range, systematic comments, and partial taxonomic bibliography. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 42–43, provided a brief characterization and photograph. Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2009, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 3: 1393–1397, provided an account (as Paa blanfordii) for China, figures, and map, and included this species in their Paa blanfordii group. Not addressed, and therefore not assigned to subgenus, by Che, Zhou, Hu, Papenfuss, Wake, and Zhang, 2010, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 107: 13765–13770, and Che, Zhou, Hu, Papenfuss, Wake, and Zhang, 2010, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Suppl. Inform., doi:10.1073/pnas.1008415107/-/DCSupplemental: 2. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Colored Atlas of Chinese Amph.: 360, provided a brief account for China. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Colored Atlas of Chinese Amph.: 360, provided a brief account (as Paa blanfordii) for China. Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 38–39, provided an account for Xizang, China, as Paa blanfordii. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 62, for brief account. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted several larval descriptions of varying levels of completeness in the literature. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2012, Colored Atlas Chinese Amph. Distr.: 457, provided an account (as Paa blanfordii), illustrations, and a range map for China. See Subba, Aravind, and Ravikanth, 2016, Check List, 13(1: 2033): 6, for Sikkim, India, record. 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. Che, Jiang, Yan, and Zhang, 2020, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 252–254, provided a detailed account for Tibet, China. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, discussed the species in Nepal.  

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