Goutam C. Sarker, Elijah Wostl, Panupong Thammachoti, Irvan Sidik, Amir Hamidy, Nia Kurniawan, Eric N. Smith
Using a combination of morphological and molecular data we recognize three new species of Puppet Toad, Sigalegalephrynus Smart, Sarker, Arifin, Harvey, Sidik, Hamidy, Kurniawan & Smith, a recently described genus endemic to the highland forests of Sumatra, Indonesia. Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences recovered a monophyletic relationship among all Puppet Toads, with two distinct evolutionary clades, a northern and a southern. The northern clade includes Sigalegalephrynus gayoluesensis sp. nov., and S. burnitelongensis sp. nov., and the southern clade includes S. harveyi sp. nov., S. mandailinguensis, and S. minangkabauensis. With the discovery of these three new species, Sigalegalephrynus contains more endemic species than any other genus of toad in Indonesia. We used maximum entropy, implemented in MaxEnt, to identify suitable habitats and occurrence probability of additional undescribed new species from the island. The most important predictors of Sigalegalephrynus distribution were elevation (64.5%) and land cover (7.11%). Based on the probability of presence, it is likely that there are many more species of the genus awaiting discovery in Sumatra. Our analysis, based on IUCN Red List of Threatened Species category and criteria, shows that all of the five species of Sigalegalephrynus are in great risk of extinction and should be placed into the Endangered (EN) category of IUCN Red List. Copyright © 2019 Magnolia Press.
Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center (ARDRC), Department of Biology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, 76019, TX, United States; Laboratory of Herpetology, Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense, Research Center for Biology, Indonesian Institute of Sciences-LIPI, Widyasatwaloka Jl. Raya Jakarta Bogor km 46, Cibinong, West Java, Indonesia; Department of Biology, Universitas Brawijaya, Jl. Veteran, Malang, East Java, Indonesia
