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

Amolops formosus (Günther, 1876)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ranidae > Genus: Amolops > Species: Amolops formosus

Polypedates formosus Günther, 1876 "1875", Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1875: 570. Holotype: BMNH, by original designation; this being BMNH 1947.2.4.18 (formerly registered as 1874.4.17.281) according to Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 68, and museum records. Type locality: "Khassya" (= Khasi Hills), Assam, India.

Rana formosa — Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 70.

Rana (Hylorana) formosa — Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 220.

Amolops formosus — Dubois, 1974, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 213: 357.

Amolops (Amolops) formosus — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 321.

Amolops gyirongensis Jiang, Wang, Wang, Pan, and Che in Che, Jiang, Yan, and Zhang, 2020, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 201. Holotype: KIZ 012536, by original designation. Type locality: "Jingcun, Gyirong, Tibet (28.324503° N, 85.339882° E, 2007 m)". Synonymy by Mahony, Nidup, Streicher, Teeling, and Kamei, 2022, Herpetol. J., 32: 154.

Common Names

Assam Sucker Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 97; Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90).

Beautiful Stream Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 64; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 68).

Assam Cascade Frog (Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 79; Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 70).

Hill Stream Frog (Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90).

Khasi Hill Cascade Frog (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 10).

Distribution

High gradient streams in northern India (Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Himanchal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, West Bengal), northern Bangladesh, and Nepal and nearby Jingcun, Gyirong, Tibet, China, 2007 m elevation; possibly into adjacent Bhutan (but see comment).

Geographic Occurrence

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

Likely/Controversially Present: Bhutan

Comment

See comment under Amolops himalayanus. See account (as Rana formosa) by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 220. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 53, provided a brief account. Ray, 1999, Mem. Zool. Surv. India, 18: 21–24, provided an account. Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 204–207, provided an extensive account for the Nepal population. See brief account by Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90. Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 77, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. Dubois, 2004, Alytes, 21: 175, noted that the account by Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 212-214, under the name Amolops monticola, actually applies to this species. Devi and Shamungou, 2006, J. Exp. Zool. India, 9: 317-324, and Ningombam and Bordoloi, 2007, Zoos' Print J., 22: 2688-2690, provided a record for Manipur, northeastern India. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 70-72, provided a brief characterization and photographs. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted no larval descriptions in the literature. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 47, for brief account for Nepal. Nidup, Gyeltshen, Penjor, Dorji, and Pearch, 2016, Herpetol. Bull., London, 136: 13–16, discussed identification of Amolops himalayanus in Bhutan, with which Amolops formosus has been confused. (This population is now referred to Amolops sp. 1, by Mahony, Nidup, Streicher, Teeling, and Kamei, 2022, Herpetol. J., 32: 142–175.) Shrestha and Gurung, 2019, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 13 (2: e198): 152–159, for comments on life history in Manaslu Conservation Area, Nepal. 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. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, discussed the genetics of the Nepal population. In the Amolops viridimaculatus group of Jiang, Ren, Lyu, Wang, Wang, Lv, Wu, and Li, 2021, Zool. Res., Kunming, 42: 574–591. Rahman, Nneji, and Hossain, 2022, J. Asia-Pacific Biodiversity, 15: 147–156, excluded this species from the Bangladesh fauna without comment, suggesting earlier misidentifications. Mahony, Nidup, Streicher, Teeling, and Kamei, 2022, Herpetol. J., 32: 154, placed this species in the Amolops viridimaculatus group and discussed their rationale for placing Amolops gyirongensis into the synonymy of Amolops formosus as well as reidentifying the record of Amolops formosus from Bhutan by Tshewang and Letro, 2018, J. Threatened Taxa, 10: 12493, as “Amolops sp. 1. (viridimaculatus group)”.

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 additional information specific to China see Amphibia China