The validity of Pelophylax chosenicus (Okada, 1931) and P. hubeiensis (Fei & Ye, 1982) (Amphibia, Ranidae)

By

Zhou, Sheng-Bo
Zhang, Qiu-Yi
Hu, Zi-Qiang
Xia, Zu-Yao
Miao, Qing
Guan, Ping
Shi, Jingsong

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2023-6-21

Original Publication

Herpetozoa

Volume

36

Pages

143--152

Subjects

Amphibians , Morphology , Phylogeny , synonym , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.36.e100072

 

Abstract

Pelophylax plancyi (Lataste, 1880), Pelophylax chosenicus (Okada, 1931) and Pelophylax hubeiensis (Fei & Ye, 1982) were described chronologically from East Asia. The three species have similar morphological and molecular characteristics, but the taxonomic relationships amongst them have long been ambiguous. To deal with this taxonomic issue, we examined newly-obtained topotypic specimens of P. plancyi, P. chosenicus and P. hubeiensis for morphological comparison. Furthermore, we investigated the phylogeny of pond frogs in Eurasia by Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood analyses of a fragment consisting of mitochondrial DNA gene 16s and provided a molecular phylogeny of the genus Pelophylax. There were no morphological and molecular differences between P. plancyi and P. chosenicus, but both morphological and molecular differences between P. hubeiensis and P. plancyi. Hence, we conclude that P. chosenicus is a junior synonym of P. plancyi and P. hubeiensis is a separate species from P. plancyi.