First national record of Microhyla hmongorum Hoang, Nguyen, Phan, Pham, Ninh, Wang, Jiang, Ziegler and Nguyen, 2022 (Anura, Microhylidae, Microhyla) in China

Abstract

To date, 10 species of the genus Microhyla have been recorded in China, of which six were distributed in Yunnan Province. Microhyla hmongorum Hoang, Nguyen, Phan, Pham, Ninh, Wang, Jiang, Ziegler, and Nguyen, 2022 was also speculated to be distributed in Xishuangbana, Yunnan Province, China. However, there is no evidence of documentation of M. hmongorum. We report the first country record of Microhyla hmongorum, based on specimens collected from Yunnan border region. Morphologically, the specimen was consistent with the original descriptions of M. hmongorum. Phylogenetically, the sequences of the specimens from China clustered with the sequence of type specimens of M. hmongorum from Vietnam, with uncorrected pairwise distances of 0.9% at the 16S gene fragment analysed. Therefore, we report M. hmongorum as a new record species in China.