title: The Australasian frog family Ceratobatrachidae in China, Myanmar and Thailand: discovery of a new Himalayan forest frog clade.
abstract: In an effort to study the systematic affinities and specieslevel phylogenetic relationships of the enigmatic anurans variably assigned to the genera Ingerana or Limnonectes (family Dicroglossidae), we collected new molecular sequence data for five species including four Himalayan taxa, Limnonectes xizangensis, Lim. medogensis, Lim. alpina, [corrected] Ingerana borealis and one southeast Asian species, I. tasanae, and analyzed these together with data from previous studies involving other ostensibly related taxa. Our surprising results demonstrate unequivocally that Lim. xizangensis, Lim. medogensis and Lim. alpina [corrected] form a strongly supported clade, the sister-group of the family Australasian forest frog family Ceratobatrachidae. This discovery requires an expansion of the definition of Ceratobatrachidae and represents the first record of this family in China. These three species are distinguished from the species of Ingerana and Limnonectes by the: (1) absence of interdigital webbing of the foot, (2) absence of terminal discs on fingers and toes, (3) absence of circumarginal grooves on the fingers and toes, and (4) absence of tarsal folds. Given their phylogenetic and morphological distinctiveness, we assign them to the oldest available generic name for this clade, Liurana Dubois 1987, and transfer Liurana from Dicroglossidae to the family Ceratobatrachidae. In contrast, Ingerana tasanae was found to be clustered with strong support with the recently described genus Alcalus (Ceratobatrachidae), a small clade of otherwise Sundaic species; this constitutes a new record of the family Ceratobatrachidae for Myanmar and Thailand. Finally, Ingerana borealis clustered with the "true" Ingerana (family Dicroglossidae), for which the type species is I. tenasserimensis.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China;Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yezin, Nay Pyi Taw 05282, Myanmar.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China;Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yezin, Nay Pyi Taw 05282, Myanmar.
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China; Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK 73072-7029, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China.
authors.forename: Jie-Qiong
authors.initials: JQ
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China; School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Phayao, Phayao 56000, Thailand.
authors.forename: Chatmongkon
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Suwannapoom
authors.affiliation: Imaging Biodiversity Expedition, Beijing 100107, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Herpetology, California Academy of Sciences, California 94118, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Jens V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Vindum
authors.affiliation: Biodiversity Institute and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1345 Jayhawk Blvd, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS 66045, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Rafe M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Yunnan 650223, China. chej@mail.kiz.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Che
mesh_terms: D000531:Altitude; D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002681:China; D002052:Myanmar; D010802:Phylogeny; D017421:Sequence Analysis; D013785:Thailand
keywords: Dicroglossidae; Himalaya; Liurana
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