Marking the third consecutive discovery of new species of amphibians from
the Namdapha Tiger Reserve this year, a team of biologists from Uttarakhand’s Wildlife
Institute of India, United Kingdom’s University of Wolverhampton and the State’s
Forest department has discovered music frog in the Namdapha-Kamlang landscape
of Arunachal Pradesh.
“This newly-discovered frog grows up to six centimetres, and is
characterised by a pale cream-coloured line on the mid body, and with a unique
call pattern consisting of two-three notes. Initially we first heard the call
from a marsh near Noa-Dihing River, which is quite similar to wild duck
species, like quack… quack… quack, which we never heard before,” the team
informed.
Biologists named the new species after the gorgeous Noa-Dihing river as
Noa-Dihing music frog (Nidirana Noadihing).
Subsequently, the species was also discovered in the surrounding marshy
habitat of Glaw Lake in the Kamlang Tiger Reserve in 2022.
The marshy habitat is dominated by a specific grass species called
Rotala, in which the males make circular pits almost like their private pools
and call from the pits to attract female frogs. The interesting breeding,
egg-laying and parental care, if any, still remain unknown for this interesting
marsh-adapted frog species.
The discovery of the new species indicates that further study is likely
to reveal more populations of Nidirana Noadihing inside the Namdapha Tiger
Reserve.
“As the new species inhabits swampy areas, conservation of such habitats
inside the protected area and its surrounding is crucial. The addition of three
new species of amphibians within one year underscore the biological richness of
the region and flag the need for further exploration in hyper diverse
Namdapha-Kamlang landscape,” it said.
These novel findings are remarkable for the fact that all these
discoveries represent new generic record for the country.
All these findings have been published in international peer-reviewed
journals from Germany, London, and New Zealand.
NE Watch Desk
