Full text loading...
Current Herpetology
Abstract
Abstract:
Larval morphology offers some of the more important characters for the taxonomy of Meristogenys, and larval information of almost all species has been reported for this genus. However, some larval assignments in previous studies were not based on reliable methods and should be reexamined using modern techniques. In this study, we used molecular methods to re-examine the larval assignments for M. poecilus, whose larvae had been assigned previously based on conventional morphological methods. The analysis revealed that the larvae of this species had been misidentified as M. phaeomerus, a sympatric species. Here we correct the erroneous assignment and briefly comment about the taxonomic status of M. phaeomerus and M. orphnocnemis, based on our results.
We are grateful to The Socio-Economic Research Unit of Malaysia and the State Government of Sarawak kindly permitted the project. The Forest Department, Sarawak, kindly provided all the facilities required for conducting this research. L.-H. Seng, A. H. Kassim, N.-S. Wong, J. J. Kendawong, the late A. H. Abang, D. Labang, K. Araya, and T. Hikida are acknowledged for help in field trips. The field trip by Matsui was made possible by grants under The Monbusho International Scientific Research Program (Field Research, No. 03041044). This study was partly supported by the funding from Grantin-Aid of Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS: 05J02325, 16K18600) to Shimada.
Data & Media loading...