IJune 1995'

Asiatic Herpetological ResearchVol. 6, pp. 73-77

A Study of Relationships among Ranid Frogs of the Genera Nanorana andAltirana in the Transhimalaya Mountains of China

Shun-qing Lu and Da-tong Yang
Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Academia Sinica,
Kunming, Yunnan, China

Abstract. -Nanorana ventripunctata,N. pleskei and Altirana parkeri were examined electrophoretically toinvestigate the intraspecific genetic relationships. Twelve isozyme loci were assayed and their allele

The result of UPGMA clustering, when corrected by the Present-Day Ancestor
Method and based on the allele frequencies, detected that the genetic relationship between N. ventripunctata andA. parkeri is closer than that between N. ventripunctata and N. pleskei. The authors suggest that the genus
frequencies were calculated.

Altirana should be canceled and that A. parkeri be placed in the genus Nanorana.

Key words: Anura, Ranidae, Nanorana, Altirana,

genetic relationships, isozyme, China, Transhimalaya

Mountains.

TABLE 1.

The location, altitude, date and number of specimens collected.

SpeciesVol. 6, p.

June 1995

Asiatic Herpetological Research

TABLE 3. Genetic distances and similarities among the five frogs, based on allozyme(1972) genetic distances above diagonal, and genetic similarities below diagonal.

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Asiatic Herpetological Research

June 1995

TABLE 5. The corrected distances with R. chensinensis as the present-day ancestor.
N. pleskei-1.4332

N. ventripunctata

N. ventripunctata
N. pleskei

A. parked-1.6854-1.1975

A. parked_ N. ventripunctata.A. parked

N. pleskei

-1.00

-2.00

FIG. 2. The UPGMA phenogram of corrected distances with R. chensinensis as the present-day ancestor.

N. ventripunctata
A. parked

N. pleskei
FIG. 3. The genealogical phenogram among the three species.

we prepared

UPGMA phenogram which is shown in

but the genus Nanorana of their meaning
does not contain N. ventripunctata. It is justFigure 2.

/V.

Based on Table

5,

aventripunctata

that

confusesthedistinction between the two genera, and theNot minding the difference of distances

study of morphological similarities among

we find that they arethe three species of the two genera shows
the same result that N. ventripunctata and A.

amongthe frogs,

similar in both Figure 1 and Figure 2,
though they are based on the different
present-day ancestors, so we synthesized

and simplified them as shown as in Figure
3.

more similar than N
andA', pleskei (Lu and Yang,ventripunctata
Bothoftheresults of biochemical1994).
andsystematics
morphological similarity

parkeriare.

genetic

do not support the presently
recognized generic assignments and werelationship between N. ventripunctata andA. parkeri is closer than that between

suggest that N. ventripunctata should betaken out of the genus Nanorana and placed

ventripunctata and N. pleskei.

in the genus Altirana.

studiesFigure3shows

thattheN.

From Table 3, we know Nei's (1972)
genetic distances among the three species areDiscussion

Uptothepresent,

thedifferences

between Nanorana and Altirana described byTian and Jiang (1986) are the most detailed,0.5709, 0.5693 and 0.2979. This is larger
than 0.15, but much smaller than 1.05.
These differences are at the species level,but not the generic level (Thorpe, 1983.
Also, we know that there is a principle: inorder to avoid more mongenera, theinterruption of a genus with other genera
should be anti-relative with the number ofspecies in this genus. Thinking of these andthevagueline

between Nanorana andAltirana, according to the principle ofpriority of the International Code ofZoological Nomenclature, the authors
suggest that it is perfect to cancel the genus
Altirana, and that the species parkeri shouldbe placed in the genus Nanorana.

thankMr.

1987. The essence of the Present-Day
Ancestor Method for constructing evolutionary trees
from sequence data and the puzzle encountered in

LI, J. Y.

applyingmethod.

this9(2): 141-150.

LU, S. Q. AND D. T. YANG.

collecting specimens with one of us (Lu)and his help in the laboratory. Thanks also
are given to Professor Jingyan Li for his
suggestions concerning the Present-Day

Ancestor Method.

Literature Cited

PASTEUR, N.

1988.
Manual technique deelectrophorese des proteines.
Lavoisier TEC & DOC., Paris. 215pp.

genetriqueparPp. 131-152. InG.
Oxford and D. Rollonson (eds.), Protein
Adaptive and taxonomicpolymorphism:significance. Academic Press, London.
levels of tax onomic separation.

S.

TIAN, W. S. AND Y. M. JIANG (EDITORS),ASSISTED BY G. F. WU, Q. X. HU, E. M. ZHAO,for

FEI, L. AND Y. Z. HUANG. 1985. A new speciesof the genus Nanorana (Amphibia Ranidae) fromActa Biologica

Plateau Sinica 1985(4):71-75. (In Chinese).
1985.

Studies on the influence of the Hcngduan Mountains

Herpetologica Sinica 1985, 4(3):225-233.
Chinese).

Acta(In1986.

Identification manual

Chinese species of amphibians andScience Press, Beijing.

on the evolution of the amphibians.

A study on

Asiatic Herpetological Research. In Press.

AND Q. Y. HUANG.

HU, Q. X, Y. M. JIANG, AND E. M. ZHAO.

1994.

morphological similarity between the genera
Nanorana and Atltirana (Amphibia, Anura, Ranidae).

1983. Enzyme variation, genetic
distance and evolutionary divergence in relation toDingqien Rao fornorthwestern Yunnan, China.

Research

Zoological(In Chinese).

THORPE, J. P.

Acknowledgments

WeVol. 6, p. 77

Asiatic Herpetological Research

June 1995

reptiles.

164 pp. (In Chinese).