ITANAGAR, 21 Nov: A team of biologists from Dehradun (Uttarakhand)-based Wildlife Institute of India and UK-based University of Wolverhampton, in collaboration with the state’s forest department, has discovered a new species of music frog in the Namdapha-Kamlang landscape of Arunachal Pradesh.
This species was recorded from near Gandhigram, close to the Namdapha Tiger Reserve. It has been named after the gorgeous Noa-Dihing river as Noa-Dihing music frog (Nidirana noadihing).
“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 the Noa-Dihing river, which is quite similar to wild duck species, like “quack… quack… quack,” which we never heard before,” the team informed in a release.
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 particular 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 from the close vicinity of one of the largest protected areas of Northeast India indicates that further study is likely to uncover 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.
This new finding marks the third consecutive discovery of new species of amphibians from the extraordinarily biodiverse easternmost tiger reserve of India this year. These novel findings are also significant 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.
