Amolops monticola (Anderson, 1871)

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

Hylorana monticola Anderson, 1871, J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 40: 20. Holotype: Not stated; ZSIC 10036 according to Sclater, 1892, List Batr. Indian Mus.: 10. Type locality: "Darjeeling, 3500 feet", West Bengal, India.

Rana monticola — Boulenger, 1890, Fauna Brit. India, Rept. Batr.: 461.

Rana (Hylorana) monticola — Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 127-130.

Staurois monticola — Sichuan Biological Research Institute, 1977, Syst. Key Chinese Amph.: 56.

Amolops monticola —Zhao In Hu, 1985, in Frost (ed.), Amph. Species World: 455; Fei, Ye, and Huang, 1990, Key to Chinese Amph.: 165.

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

Common Names

Mountain Sucker Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 97; Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 57).

Mountain Stream Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 64; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 71).

Mountain Torrent Frog (Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 232; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 57).

Mountain Cascade Frog (Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 79; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 57; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 10).

Montane Cascade Frog (Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 73).

Cascade Frog (Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90).

Distribution

Known definitely only from the low-lying Himalayan regions in and around its type locality of ‘Darjeeling’ in West Bengal State and south Sikkim district in Sikkim State, India. All other records from Nepal, Bhutan, China, and India require genetic confirmation (see comment).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India

Likely/Controversially Present: Bhutan, China, People's Republic of, Nepal

Endemic: India

Comment

See account (as Rana monticola) by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 206. Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 232–233, provided a brief account, figure, and map. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 53–54, 215, provided a brief account. See also brief account by Zhao and Yang, 1997, Amph. Rept. Hengduan Mountains Region: 115–116. See brief account by Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 90–91. Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 76, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. See comment under Amolops himalayanus. Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 113, provided partial bibliography, systematic comments, and range in India. Ao, Bordoloi, and Ohler, 2003, Zoos' Print J., 18: 1117–1125, provided a specific locality for Nagaland, northeastern India, which Patel, Garg, Das, Stuart, and Biju, 2021, J. Nat. Hist., London, 55: 1412, likely should be assigned to Amolops kohimaensis. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 73–74, provided a brief characterization and photographs. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted a couple of larval descriptions in the literature of varying levels of completeness. Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2009, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 3: 1522–1526, provided an account, figures, and range map, and included the species in their Amolops monticola group. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Colored Atlas of Chinese Amph.: 412, provided a brief account including photographs. Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 57–58, provided an account for Xizang, China. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 49, for brief account for Nepal. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2012, Colored Atlas Chinese Amph. Distr.: 428, provided an account, photographs, and a range map. Jiang, Wang, Xie, Zou, Liu, Jiang, Li, and Che, 2016, Zool. Res., Kunming, 37: 38–39, doubted the records from China, implying that most or all are referable to Amolops aniquiaoensis. Wangyal, 2014, J. Bhutan Ecol. Soc., 1: 30, noted that the presence in Bhutan requires confirmation. See Subba, Aravind, and Ravikanth, 2016, Check List, 13(1: 2033): 10, for Sikkim, India, record. In the Amolops monticola group of Zeng, Liang, Li, Lyu, Wang, and Zhang, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 146 (106753): 1–9, and Wu, Yan, Stuart, Prendini, Suwannapoom, Dahn, Zhang, Cai, Xu, Jiang, Chen, Lemmon, Lemmon, Raxworthy, Orlov, Murphy, and Che, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 144 (106701): 1–13, who discussed molecular phylogenetics. Not mentioned by Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, in their report on the Nepal amphibians. Patel, Garg, Das, Stuart, and Biju, 2021, J. Nat. Hist., London, 55: 1403–1140, discussed and redelimited the species including relevant morphological, acoustic, and mtDNA comparisons with other members of the Amolops monticola group as well as redescribing the holotype and providing photographs of specimens in life. These authors suggested that all records from northeastern India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China require genetic confirmation due to the multiplicity of similar species, several of which named in recent years. These authors suggested that records from China are likely referable to Amolops aniqiaoensis. In the Amolops monticola group of Jiang, Ren, Lyu, Wang, Wang, Lv, Wu, and Li, 2021, Zool. Res., Kunming, 42: 574–591. 

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