ninad's Journal

Amphi means Both . Animals who can live in water as well as on land . Amphibians includes Frogs , Toad , Salamanders , Newts , Ceacilians. But not Crocodiles and tortoise . They are reptiles . Amphibians are characterized by ,
1) They dont have any scales / hairs on their body.
2) Often their larva live in water and adult on land.
3) Their eggs dont have any shell.
4) Often they can Breath by their skin.
These animals' ancestors were the first to venture out from the water and adapt to life on land. Amphibian larvea are often aquatic and go through a complex metamorphosis process as they grow to adulthood.
Many amphibians can absorb oxygen directly into their bloodstream through their skin and are also able to expell carbon dioxide waste back into the air. The skin of amphibians lacks scales and hair. It is smooth and sometimes moist, making it quite permeable to gases and water. This permeability is thought to make amphibians particularly vulnerable to toxins in air and water such as herbicides, pesticides, and pollutants. Amphibians have been sharp decline throughout many areas worldwide. This is thought to be an early warning sign of a troubled environment.

Among anuran species, Fejervarya limnocharis is one of the most widely distributed species in Asia, extending from Japan in the east to Nepal in the west and Indonesia to the south (Frost, 1985). Because of few morphological differences, “F. limnocharis” has been conventionally regarded as a single species. However, recent detailed analyses have demonstrated that there is a degree of genetic differentiation within conventional F. limnocharis, and therefore it has been suggested that “F. limnocharis” contains several cryptic species (Dubois and Ohler, 2000). For example, Dubois (1975) concluded that Nepalese “F. limnocharis” could be classified into four distinct species. Veith et al. (2001) also described a cryptic species in the F. limnocharis complex from Java, Indonesia, and named it F. iskandari. Consequently, there are now regarded to be 32 species for the genus Fejervarya(Frost, 2006). Thus, the F. limnocharis group to be identified should be called the Fejervarya limnocharis complex (Djong et al., 2007). Furthermore, there are few morphological differences and few morphological characteristics usable for classification throughout this genus, not only for the F. limnocharis complex, and so it is difficult to correctly identify.
Recent molecular phylogenetic studies indicate that the genus Fejervarya is divided into two main groups: the F. limnocharis group distributed in Southeast and East Asia and the F. syhadrensis group distributed in India and South Asia (Kurabayashi et al., 2005; Frost et al., 2006; Sumida et al., 2007). Our mt gene data shows that the haplotype 1 and 2 groups were included in the Southeast Asian group and that haplotype 3 was nested in the South Asian group . Based on mt gene data, in the Southeast Asian group, the haplotype 1 group made a clade with F. limnocharis collected from the type locality of this species. The maximum sequence divergences between haplotype 1 and F. limnocharis were 0.9% and 0.6% for 12S and 16S rRNA genes, respectively. This small sequence divergence of mt genes and the resultant phylogenetic relationship clearly indicate that the haplotype 1 group, which is widely distributed in Thailand, corresponds to the “real” F. limnocharis

Population Variation in Hylara malabarica ( Fungoid frog ) from Northern Western ghats of India ..
Batrachologist have Found 6 Different Population of fungoid frog from northern western ghats of India .. Well , Widely distributed species often show inter population-variation. ( Variations in morphological characters and genetic analysis ) . Also it known as Species complex. Both morphological and genetic analysis revealed that the six populations in the current study lie in at least four different clusters: 1) Tamhini, 2) Dhamapur, 3) Kolvan and Ghatghar, and 4) Amboli and Velneshwar.
Further, morphological as well as genetic similarity and differences among the six isolated populations were not dependent on their geographical distances (Table 1). Kolvan and Ghatghar populations shared more similarity though they are separated by 80km. Where as Kolvan and Tamhini do not show any similarity yet are 20km apart. Similarly, Amboli population shared more similarity with Velneshwar population than with Dhamapur population, even though Amboli and Dhamapur are just 44km apart while Amboli and Velneshwar are 182km apart. Further, Amboli and Velneshwar have a large difference in altitude , as Velneshwar is on the coastline while Amboli is on the crest line of the Western Ghats (which form a geographical barrier between these two populations). There is also a difference of 20 in the latitudinal distribution of these two populations . Such kind of pattern suggests possibility of more than one species that are together considered as Hylarana malabarica.
The paper was published byDepartment of zoology Garaware college Pune ,
Population variations in the Fungoid Frog Hylarana malabarica (Anura: Ranidae) from northern Western Ghats of India
Anand Padhye , Anushree Jadhav , Manawa Diwekar & Neelesh Dahanukar