Odorous Frogs, Odorrana spp., are found across East and Southeast Asia, from northeastern India south to Sumatra and east to Borneo and the Ryukyu Archipelago. The Piebald Odorous Frog, Odorrana schmackeri, was first described in 1992 from Hubei Province, and was formerly thought to have a very wide distribution, across southern China and northern Vietnam, where it is found in mountain streams in evergreen forests. More recently it has been realized that this is a very wide distribution for a Frog favouring upland environments, and that the ‘species’ is likely to be a cluster of closely related cryptic species (species which cannot be easily told apart by physical examination), with three new species having been described within its range since 2007, in Sichuan, Fukian, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang provinces.
In a paper published in the journal PeerJ on 4 October 2018, Shize Li of the Department of Food Science and Engineering at Maotai University, and the Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Ning Xu, also of the Department of Food Science and Engineering at Maotai University, Jingcai Lv of the Guizhou Institute of Biology, Jianping Jiang, also of the Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Gang Wei of the Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory at Guiyang College, and Bin Wang, again of the Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, describe a new species of Piebald Odorous Frog from Guizhou Province, China.
The new species is named Odorrana kweichowensis, where ‘kweichowensis’ means ‘from Kweichow’, an old spelling of Guizhou. Like other Piebald Odorous Frogs, Odorrana kweichowensis is a small, green Frog with large black spots. Males of this species are smaller than those of other members of the group, reaching 36.2-43.3 mm, with females reaching 62.4-81.1 mm, within the typical size range of other Piebald Odorous Frogs. The species can also be distinguished by its skull, which is wider than it is long.
The new species is named Odorrana kweichowensis, where ‘kweichowensis’ means ‘from Kweichow’, an old spelling of Guizhou. Like other Piebald Odorous Frogs, Odorrana kweichowensis is a small, green Frog with large black spots. Males of this species are smaller than those of other members of the group, reaching 36.2-43.3 mm, with females reaching 62.4-81.1 mm, within the typical size range of other Piebald Odorous Frogs. The species can also be distinguished by its skull, which is wider than it is long.
Odorrana kweichowensis. Dorsolateral view of an adult female from Jinsha County in Guizhou Province, China. Li et al. (2018).
The species was first discovered within the Lengshuihe Nature Reserve in Jinsha County, where it was found in broad streams, and near the riparian areas, surrounded by evergreen broadleaved forests, and subsequently observed at two other locations in Meitan and Zheng’an counties, where it inhabited broad slow-flowing rivers surrounded by paddy fields. The areas outside the reserve were threatened by the construction of dams and roads, and expansion of local villages, leading Li et al. to suggest that further fieldwork is needed to assess the full geographical range of this species, and determine its conservation status.
Odorrana kweichowensis. Dorsolateral view of a female from Meitan County in Guizhou Province, China. Li et al. (2018).
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