Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Sphaerotheca maskeyi (Schleich and Anders, 1998)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Dicroglossidae > Subfamily: Dicroglossinae > Genus: Sphaerotheca > Species: Sphaerotheca maskeyi

Tomopterna maskeyi Schleich and Anders, 1998, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Contr. Herpetol. S. Asia Nepal India, 4: 57. Holotype: ZSM 106/91-2, by original designation. Type locality: "Chitwan Jungle Lodge, Royal Chitwan National Park, Central Nepal, at an altitude of approx. 300 m".

Sphaerotheca maskeyi — Vences, Glaw, Kosuch, Das, and Veith, 2000, Lourenço and Goodman (eds.), Diversité et Endéémisme à Madagascar: 232.

Sphaerotheca pashchima Padhye, Dahanukar, Sulakhe, Dandekar, Limaye, and Jamdade, 2017, J. Threatened Taxa, 9: 10289. Holotype:BNHS 6000, by original designation. Type locality: "India: Maharashtra: Saswad-Waghapur Road, Ambodi Village (18.350°N, 74.041°E, 747m)". Zoobank publication registration: BECF9606-CCAC-4F3E-89F2-432A59C7EF55. Synonymy by Jablonski, Masroor, and Hofmann, 2021, Diversity, 13 (216): 7, and Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 16.

Common Names

Maskey's Burrowing Frog (Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 80).

Chitwan Frog (Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 89).

Western Burrowing Frog (Sphaerotheca pashchima [no longer recognized]: Padhye, Dahanukar, Sulakhe, Dandekar, Limaye, and Jamdade, 2017, J. Threatened Taxa, 9: 10289).

Maskeyi Burrowing Frog (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 5).

Distribution

Western parts of peninsular India from the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, onto the Deccan Plateau in eastern Maharashtra in a variety of high to low rainfall through central Madhya Pradesh and north to the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand and Himanchal Pradesh, northern India; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab Provinces, northern Pakistan; Chitaway National Park in central Nepal and Chinpore (=Chainpur) in far western Nepal, 100 to 500 m elevation. Expected in Bhutan.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India, Nepal, Pakistan

Likely/Controversially Present: Bhutan

Comment

Deepak, Dinesh, Ohler, Shanker, Channakeshavamurthy, and Ashadevi, 2020, Zootaxa, 4885: 432, noted that no vouchers of this species exist from outside of Nepal, so literature suggesting otherwise should be employed with caution. Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 307-310, provided as Sphaerotheca maskeyi an account, figure, and map for the Nepal population. See brief account (as Tomopterna maskeyi) by Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 89-90. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 74, for brief account. Removed from the synonymy of Sphaerotheca pluvialis by Dahanukar, Sulakhe, and Padhye, 2017, J. Threatened Taxa, 9: 10278 (who provided a detailed account) and Vences, Glaw, Kosuch, Das, and Veith, 2000, Lourenço and Goodman (eds.), Diversité et Endéémisme à Madagascar: 232, where it had been placed without discussion by Dubois, 1999, J. South Asian Nat. Hist., 4: xxx, and by Dubois, 2004, Alytes, 21: 178. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted no larval descriptions in the literature. Prasad, Dinesh, Das, Swamy, Shinde, and Vishnu, 2019, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 119: 207, reported Sphaerotheca pashchima for Uttarakhand, northern India, on the basis of genetic data. Sreekumar and Dinesh, 2020, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 120: 33–40, discussed the range in Maharashtra, India, in terms of agro-climatic zones. Prasad, Gautam, Gupta, Murthy, Ramesh, Shinde, and Das, 2020, Zootaxa, 4851: 450–476, reported on morphology and advertisement call for a population of nomimal Sphaerotheca pashchima in the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, central India. Dandekar, Sulakhe, and Padhye, 2020, Reptiles & Amphibians, 27: 390–396, discussed and mapped the range of Sphaerotheca pashchima, providing several major range extensions confirmed by molecular markers. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, discussed the species in Nepal. Jablonski, Masroor, and Hofmann, 2021, Diversity, 13 (216): 1–8, provided a genetically confirmed record from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, northern Pakistan, and a densely sampled 16s mtDNA Bayesian tree which resulted in the synonymy of Sphaerotheca pashchima. 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. 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. Gosavi and Yadav, 2022, Reptiles & Amphibians, 29: 70–82, reported on vocalization.

External links:

Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.

For access to general information see Wikipedia
For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
For information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
For information on distribution, habitat, and conservation see the Map of Life
For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.