A tiny new species of Platypelis from the Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar (Amphibia: Microhylidae)

  • Frank Glaw Zoologische Staatssammlung München
  • Jörn Köhler Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt
  • Miguel Vences
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2012.9
Keywords: Microhylidae, Cophylinae, Platypelis ravus sp. nov., Madagascar, Marojejy National Park

Abstract

We describe a tiny new frog species of the genus Platypelis (Anura: Microhylidae: Cophylinae) from Marojejy National Park, northeastern Madagascar. Platypelis ravus sp. nov. differs from all other known Platypelis and Cophyla species by its small size (17-19 mm snout-vent length) and a combination of other morphological and bioacoustic characters. The new species seems to be most closely related to P. milloti with which it shares the principal colour pattern, but exhibits a yellow rather than red posterior venter. Uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence in a 16S rRNA gene fragment to all other known species of the genus (except P. cowanii for which no genetic data is available) is greater than 6%. We suggest the inclusion of the new species in the IUCN threat category “Data Deficient”.

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Published
2012-03-14
How to Cite
Glaw, F., Köhler, J., & Vences, M. (2012). A tiny new species of Platypelis from the Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar (Amphibia: Microhylidae). European Journal of Taxonomy, (9). https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2012.9
Issue
No. 9 (2012): A tiny new species of Platypelis from the Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar (Amphibia: Microhylidae)
Section
Zoology
Copyright (c) 2012 Frank Glaw, Jörn Köhler, Miguel Vences

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