New Species of Cascade Frog: Arunachal Pradesh

• 20 Aug 2021

Why in News

Recently, a team of researchers have discovered a new species of cascade frog in Arunachal Pradesh named Adi Cascade Frog.

• Earlier, a new frog species named Minervarya Pentali was discovered in the Western Ghats.

Key Points

• About:
  
  • It is a predominantly brown colour frog, with a size ranging roughly between 4 cm to 7 cm.
  • It is formally described as Amolops adicolasp.nov., which is morphologically distinguished from its congeners by a suite of characters that include adult size, body colouration and markings, skin texture, snout shape, foot webbing and digit tip morphology.
• Naming:
  
  • It has been named Adi Cascade Frog (Amolops Adicola) after the indigenous Adi tribe living in the Adi hills of Arunachal Pradesh. The literal meaning of Adi is “hill” or “mountain top.
    
    • Historically, this region was also known as Abor hills.
• Cascade Frog
  
  • Cascade frogs are named so because of their preference of small waterfalls or cascades in flowing hill streams.
  • Cascade Frogs belong to the genus Amolops.
    
    • The genus Amolops is one of the largest groups of ranid frogs (family Ranidae) with currently 73 known species that are widely distributed across Northeast and North India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, through Indochina, to the Malay Peninsula.

Adi Tribe

• The Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh is believed to have come from southern China in the 16^th century.
• They are the Tibeto-Burman language speaking population.
• They reside in the far north inhabiting East Siang and Lower Dibang Valley districts of Arunachal Pradesh.
• The Adis are experts at making cane and bamboo items.
• Solung (harvesting festival where animal sacrifices and rituals are performed) and Aran (a hunting festival where all the male members of the family go for hunting) are two major festivals of the Adi tribes.
• It is a Scheduled Tribe in Arunachal Pradesh.

Source: TH