Robin Suyesh

University of Delhi | DU · Sri Venkateswara College

Frogs and toads have species-specific repertoires of vocalizations that function in contexts related to reproduction. Although some 6000 anuran species have been described to date, we have comparatively few descriptions of their vocalizations, which are among their most conspicuous behaviors. Statistical descriptions of vocal repertoires are key to...

Anurans show the highest diversity in reproductive modes of all vertebrate taxa, with a variety of associated breeding behaviours. One striking feature of anuran reproduction is amplexus. During this process, in which the male clasps the female, both individuals’ cloacae are juxtaposed to ensure successful external fertilization. Several types of a...

The genus Raorchestes is a large radiation of Old World tree frogs for which the Western Ghats in Peninsular India is the major center for origin and diversification. Extensive studies on this group during the past two decades have resolved long-standing taxonomic confusions and uncovered several new species, resulting in a four-fold increase in th...

In this study, we provide the description of reproductive behaviour and also report the first evidence and description of vocalization in Tylototriton himalayanus, a recently described species from Eastern India and Nepal. Known variously as the Himalayan crocodile newt or orange-warted salamander, T. himalayanus is one of two known salamanders fro...

Advertisement calls in frogs have evolved to be species-specific signals of recognition and are therefore considered an essential component of integrative taxonomic approaches to identify species and delineate their distribution range. The species rich genus Microhyla is a particularly challenging group for species identification, discovery and con...

Climate change is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss. Among vertebrates, amphibians are one of the more sensitive groups to climate change due to their unique ecology, habitat requirements, narrow thermal tolerance and relatively limited dispersal abilities. We projected the influence of climate change on an endemic toad, Malabar Tree To...

Color anomalies have a negative consequence on the individual’s survival and reproduction. Nature generally selects against abnormally pigmented individuals because their abnormal colouration makes them immunologically weak and increases their vulnerability to predation by reducing their camouflage. Thus, such animals do not reach the adult stage...

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate taxon, with 41% of amphibian species facing the threat of extinction. The decline in amphibian populations, in tandem with the increase in reports of morphological anomalies, has raised important conservation-related concerns. Anophthalmia is one such abnormality, a craniofacial deformity defined by t...

A recent addition to the Indian herpetofauna is Roarchestes kollimalai Gowande, Ganesh & Mirza 2020, a bush frog species, described based on a type series of three specimens from the Kolli hills in the lesser-known Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India (Gowande et al. 2020). The authors attempted to resolve the status of the previously ambiguously ide...

This study presents a systematic revision of South Asian members of the taxonomically challenging genus Microhyla Tschudi, 1838. Species relationships and diagnostic characters are determined by integrating molecular, morphological, and acoustic approaches, through which we also recognize six groups of closely related species. In addition, a new sp...

The Night Frog genus Nyctibatrachus (Family Nyctibatrachidae) represents an endemic anuran lineage of the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot, India. Until now, it included 28 recognised species, of which more than half were described recently over the last five years. Our amphibian explorations have further revealed the presence of undescribed spec...

Uncorrected pairwise distances between 16S mitochondrial gene sequences of the new and phylogenetically related Nyctibatrachus species

Classification matrices from the discriminant function analyses

Neighbor-Joining (NJ) tree based on Kimura-2-parameter model for 16S mitochondrial gene sequences, representing all the 28 previously known Nyctibatrachus species, seven newly sampled populations from the Western Ghats and an outgroup taxa

List of DNA sequences used in the study

Scores for Discriminant function analysis of principal components resulting from nine size-corrected morphometric variables of adult male specimens

Morphometric measurements (in mm) of the adult specimens of seven new Nyctibatrachus species described in the study

Diagnostic characters for the new and morphologically related Nyctibatrachus species

Call properties of seven Nyctibatrachus species measured from single calls

Male advertisement calls of Nyctibatrachus beddomii, N. minimus and N. minor

Factor loadings, eigenvalues and percent variance from Principal component analysis based on nine size-corrected morphometric variables

Call descriptions for three previously known Nyctibatrachus species

Anurans show the highest diversity in reproductive modes of all vertebrate taxa, with a variety of associated breeding behaviours. One striking feature of anuran reproduction is amplexus. During this process, in which the male clasps the female, both individuals’ cloacae are juxtaposed to ensure successful external fertilization. Several types of a...

Quantitative descriptions of animal vocalizations can inform an understanding of their evolutionary functions, the mechanisms for their production and perception, and their potential utility in taxonomy, population monitoring, and conservation. The goal of this study was to provide the first acoustical and statistical analysis of the advertisement...

A taxonomic revision of the Western Ghats species from the genus Rhacophorus is presented. Based on museum studies and new collections from localities spanning the known range of Western Ghats Rhacophorus, we review the four known species of this genus, their type specimens, current taxonomic status and their geographic distribution on the basis of...

Taxonomic descriptions of new anuran species are published with high frequency in the recent systematics literature. In contrast, there are fewer detailed quantitative descriptions of the vocalizations of these new species. Here, we describe the vocalizations of a recently described shrub frog, Pseudophilautus kani (Anura: Rhacophoridae; Biju and B...