Hylarana flavescens (Jerdon, 1853)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ranidae > Genus: Hylarana > Species: Hylarana flavescens

Rana flavescens Jerdon, 1853, J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 22: 531. Syntypes: ZSIC; reported as lost by Jerdon, 1870, Proc. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1870: 67; syntypes are ZSIC 2776-78 according to Chanda, Das, and Dubois, 2001 "2000", Hamadryad, 25: 109, although Sclater, 1892, List Batr. Indian Mus.: 9, had ambiguously considered these only "typical of Rana flavescens". ZSIC 2777 designated lectotype by Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 303. Type locality: "Found frequenting mountain streams in the forests only"; noted by : 303, as written in the ZSIC catalogue as "Malabar" (= northern districts of Kerala, India). 

Hylorana flavescens — Jerdon, 1870, Proc. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1870: 83.

Hylarana flavescensBiju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 303; Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 501, by implication. 

Indosylvirana flavescens — Oliver, Prendini, Kraus, and Raxworthy, 2015, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 90: 190. 

English Names

Yellowish Golden-backed Frog (Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 303; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 10).

Distribution

Closed-canopy streams in the southern Western Ghats in the states of Kerala (districts of Wayanad and Palakkad) and Tamil Nadu (Nilgiris District), India. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India

Endemic: India

Comment

The name Rana flavescens Jerdon, 1853, was considered a junior synonym of Rana kuhlii by Theobald, 1868, J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 37: 80, subsequently considered a possible synonym of Rana temporalis by Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 63. This tentative synonymy was continued by Boulenger, 1890, Fauna Brit. India, Rept. Batr.: 459; Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 159; and Chanda, Das, and Dubois, 2001 "2000", Hamadryad, 25: 109, although no author ever used this name as a senior synonym of Hylorana temporalis.  Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 303, recognized the species as distinct, placed it in their Hylarana flavescens group, and revised the species and its relatives. Raj, Vasudevan, Aggarwal, Dutta, Sahoo, Mahapatra, Sharma, Janani, Kar, and Dubois, 2023, Alytes, 39–40: 86–90, reported (as Hylarana flavescens) on larval morphology of genetically-confirmed specimens from Kerala, India.  

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