Comparative osteology of the fossorial frogs of the genus Synapturanus (Anura, Microhylidae) with the description of three new species from the Eastern Guiana Shield

A needle in a haystack: Integrative taxonomy reveals the existence of a new small species of fossorial frog (Anura, Microhylidae, Synapturanus) from the vast lower Putumayo basin, Peru

“…We measured 12 morphological variables on preserved specimens, following Kok and Kalamandeen (2008) and Fouquet et al (2021aFouquet et al ( , 2021b: snout-vent length (SVL); head length, from the corner of the mouth to the tip of the snout (HL); head width at the level of the angle of jaws (HW); eye to-naris distance, from the anterior edge of the eye to the center of the naris (EN); internarial distance (IN); horizontal eye diameter (ED); interorbital distance, representing the width of the underlying frontoparietal (IO); forearm length, from the proximal edge of the palmar tubercle to the outer edge of the flexed elbow (FAL); hand length, from the proximal edge of the palmar tubercle to the tip of the Finger III (HAND); crus (tibiofibular) length, from the outer edge of the flexed knee to the heel (TL); foot length, from the proximal edge of the inner metatarsal tubercle to the tip of Toe IV (FL); and thigh length, from the vent opening to the outer edge of the flexed knee (ThL). Tables 1, 2 show phenotypic features of current Synapturanus and morphological measurements of the type series of the new species respectively.…”

“…Tables 1, 2 show phenotypic features of current Synapturanus and morphological measurements of the type series of the new species respectively. Data for other Synapturanus have been taken from Nelson and Lescure 1975;Pyburn 1975, 1977, and Fouquet et al 2021b To support our morphological diagnosis, we performed two Principal Component Analyses in PAST version 3.26 (Hammer et al 2001): 1) a PCA with the original dataset presented in the supplementary material of Fouquet et al (2021a) and measurements of the two males collected in lower Putumayo River; 2) a PCA with the residuals of regression of eleven measurements with size (Snout Vent Length was taken as proxy of size). Measurements taken by Fouquet et al (2021a) are for males only, as are the two adult specimens collected in Perú.…”

“…2). We used a fragment of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA fragment, because 16S is the most frequently sequenced gene among species of Synapturanus (Fouquet et al 2021a). For the new species (a single novel DNA sequence, GenBank code OM488910), we used liver tissues from CORBIDI 21051, and used a commercial extraction kit (IBI Scientific, Peosta, USA) to extract DNA.…”

“…Three localities in Fouquet et al (2021a) are within or near Peruvian territory: two sites in the vicinity of Sierra del Divisor National Park (Synapturanus sp. "Divisor"), a protected area shared between Perú and Brazil, south of the Amazon River, and the remaining site in the Nanay River (Synapturanus sp.…”

“…"Nanay", one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River in northern Peru. Fouquet et al (2021a) also include two candidate species (Synapturanus sp. "Iça 1" and S. sp.…”