Amolops Kamal: New frog species discovered in Nagaland

New Delhi ( Vivek Ojha) : A team of researchers from Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has discovered and described a new species of cascade-dwelling frog from Nagaland, naming it ‘Amolops Kamal’ in honour of Dr Kamal Choudhury, former head of the department of Zoology at B Barooah College, Guwahati.

The discovery was published in the latest issue of the ‘Records of the Zoological Survey of India’. The specimens of the new species were collected from Singrep village in Kiphire district of Nagaland in Aug 2024 by a team of scientists from ZSI, Shillong.

The integrative taxonomic study, carried out in collaboration with scientists from ZSI, Pune, revealed that the specimens represent a distinct evolutionary lineage within the Amolops indoburmanensis species complex, a group long suspected to contain multiple cryptic species across the northeast India and Myanmar. This confirms that ‘Amolops indoburmanensis’, is not a widespread species, but actually a group of several distinct evolutionary lineages . The genus Amolops currently comprises around 90 recognised species globally, of which 20 have been reported from India.