Scientist discovers new frog species
Japan Times 27 Apr 11;
KYODO: A Japanese biologist has discovered a new species of miniature frog in the Malaysian part of Borneo Island, while refuting the "discovery" there last year of a pea-size new species that was billed as "the Old World's smallest frog," according to a newly published scientific paper.
Kyoto University professor and amphibian specialist Masafumi Matsui, who has long been conducting fieldwork in Borneo, described the new species of narrow-mouthed frog of the genus Microhyla in a report in the latest edition of the academic journal Zootaxa.
Matsui gave the scientific name Microhyla malang to the new species, which inhabits the western part of Sarawak state and the western part of Sabah state.
In the same report, he provided detailed scientific evidence to invalidate the widely reported finding of the Old World's smallest frog, named M. nepenthicola, showing that it is in reality M. borneensis, an earlier described species of Microhyla frog with the unique habit of breeding in pitcher plants on the forest floor.
Matsui said M. malang and M. borneensis, closely related species that coinhabit Mount Serapi in Kubah National Park, are very similar in appearance but can be distinguished by body size, color pattern and extent of toe webbing.
Last year, Indraneil Das, a Malaysian scientist at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and his German colleague, Alexander Haas from Hamburg University's Zoological Museum, published a paper in Zootaxa in which they described the smaller form of what had long been regarded by taxonomists as M. borneensis as a new species, considering the larger form to be true M. borneensis.
