A team of researchers from Zoological Survey of India found Amolops siju in Siju cave in 2020
Researchers from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have discovered a new species of frogs from deep within the Siju cave in the South Garo Hills district of Meghalaya. The discovery has been published in Journal of Animal Diversity published from Lorestan University, Iran.
The ZSI team named the new cascade ranid species Amolops siju after the cave from where this discovery was made, according to a press note by the researchers. Siju is a four-kilometre-long natural limestone cave.
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Cascade Frogs are named so because of their preference for small waterfalls or cascades in flowing hill streams.
The genus Amolops is one of the largest groups of ranid frogs (family Ranidae) with currently over 70 known species that are widely distributed across northeast and north India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, through Indochina, to the Malaya Peninsula, according to news daily The Times of India.
The discovery of new species from a cave is very rare. This is the second time such a discovery has been made in India — the first being the discovery of the Micrixalus spelunca in 2014 from a cave in Tamil Nadu.
The specimens of Amolops siju were collected in January 2020 during a cave expedition by the ZSI team. The tissue samples of the specimen were subjected to molecular studies to ascertain their specific identity from the other known species of cascade Amolops frogs.
Based on the morphological, molecular and spatial data, the team concluded this frog from the Siju cave was new to science and decided to name the new species after the cave.
Although the specimens were collected 60-100 metres from the cave entrance and the dark zones beyond 100 m of the cave entrance, the team did not find any troglobitic or cave-adapted modification, suggesting that this species of frog is not a permanent resident of the shelter.
The team was comprised of Bhaskar Saikia and Bikramjit Sinha of ZSI, Shillong and KP Dinesh and Shabnam Ansari of ZSI, Pune.
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Interestingly, this is the fourth new species of a cascade frog (Amolops) published by the same team recently. Amolops chanakya, Amolops terraorchis and Amolops tawang were discovered in Arunachal Pradesh.
There have been reports of the presence of frog populations in Siju cave since 1922, when ZSI did its first bio-speleological exploration there, the press note stated. The cave is currently known to harbour more than 100 animal species, mostly invertebrates like cave crickets, spiders, beetles, earthworms, among other.
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Siju Cave frog or Amolops siju discovered from Siju Cave, Meghalaya. Photo: Bhaskar Saikia.png)
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