Figure 1 - uploaded by Yinpeng Zhang
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The map of the study area. Red star denotes Yinjiang, Yunnan, China, the locality of Raorchestes longchuanensis.
Source publication
Many frogs undergo direct development, in which the embryo develops within the egg and lacks a tadpole stage, being hatched morphologically similar to the adults. Such reproductive behaviour ensures the evolutionary success of their lineages without the limitation of needing a moist substrate for egg deposition. The species in the genus Raorchestes...
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Context 1
... work was carried out near the type locality of R. longchuanensis, Yingjiang, Yunnan, China (Figure 1), during June 2019. The average elevation of this area is 489.45 m asl. ...
Citations
... The embryonic development of only a few Raorchestes spp has been described due to the difficulty of finding their eggs in the natural environment. Like its congeners Raorchestes huanglianshan (Zhang et al., 2022) and Raorchestes longchuanensis (Yan et al., 2021), owing to direct development R. rezakhani embryos did not develop many of the structures associated with tadpoles, such as external gills, tadpole teeth or a coiled intestine, and the front and hind limbs developed nearly simultaneously. Interestingly, the newly hatched froglet (Fig. 4D) still had a small tail tip. ...
... The clutch size of Raorchestes may vary between species. We observed a clutch size of 23 in R. rezakhani while R. huanglianshan has been reported laying 13 eggs (Zhang et al., 2022) and a pair of R. longchuanensis in amplexus laid eggs twice within one month; the first clutch included 12 eggs, and the second included ten eggs (Yan et al., 2021), R. glandulosus has been reported to lay a clutch of 14 eggs (Krishnamurthy et al., 2002), and R. tinniens a clutch of 30 eggs (Princy & Kannan, 2018). ...
... In our present work, the developmental period of R. rezakhani is uncertain as we did not observe the eggs from the time of egg laying but only from a stage at which the embryos were already relatively advanced with head, limbs and tail. In other species under both natural and captive conditions the period for oviposition to hatching has been 22-28 days in R. glandulosus (Biju, 2003;Krishnamurthy et al., 2002), 17-19 days in R. tinniens (Princy & Kannan, 2018), in captivity alone 25-30 days in R. longchuanensis (Yan et al., 2021) and 31-35 days in R. huanglianshan (Zhang et al., 2022). ...
... Of the 74 recognized species, seven species have been originally described from China: Raorchestes longchuanensis (Yang & Li, 1978), R. menglaensis (Kou, 1990), R. andersoni (Anderson, 1927), R. cangyuanensis (Wu et al., 2019), R. dulongensis (Wu et al., 2021), R. hillisi , and R. huanglianshan . Detailed ecological data is not available for the species reported in China except for R. longchuanensis, for which Yan et al. (2021) reported the breeding mode. ...
In this study, based on morphological and molecular data, a new bush frog species is described from Yunnan, China. Eleven samples of Raorchestes malipoensis sp. nov. were collected from Malipo County, southeastern Yunnan. This species can be distinguished from other congeners by a combination of 13 morphological characters. Phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene indicate that these individuals form a monophyletic group, and genetic divergence between this clade and its closest relatives is higher than 3.1%, which is comparable to the divergence between recognized Raorchestes species. The discovery of this new species suggests that additional extensive surveys in the southeastern Yunnan would yield more amphibian lineages yet unknown to science.
