Walkerana

Walkerana is a group of frogs in the family Ranixalidae. These frogs live in the Western Ghat mountains in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, India. Scientists made this group in 2016 for three species that had been in Indirana because these frogs' bodies and DNA were so different from the frogs in Indirana that they needed a different group. Walkerana muduga had the first science paper written about it in 2020. These frogs live only in the very most south part of the Western Ghats, south of the Palghat Gap.

Etymology
The group's name comes from Sally Walker from the Zoo Outreach Organisation. It was renamed Sallywalkerana because of there was already a cricket genus Walkerana Otte and Perez-Gelabert, 2009, but that may be nomen nudum.

Description
Walkerana frogs have different DNA from other frogs in Ranixalidae. They are different from the other genus Indirana too: Walkerana frogs have much, much less webbed skin, with one finger bone with no webbing on the first and second toes (none in Indirana), and three toe bones with no webbing on the fourth toe (2–2½ in Indirana). The first toe on each front foot is shorter than the second one in Walkerana, but in most Indirana frogs, they are the same length or the first toe is longer.

Species
There are four species:
 Walkerana diplosticta (Günther, 1876)
 Walkerana leptodactyla (Boulenger, 1882)
 Walkerana muduga Dinesh, Vijayakumar, Ramesh, Jayarajan, Chandramouli, and Shanker, 2020
 Walkerana phrynoderma (Boulenger, 1882)

Scientists think there could be a fifth frog. They found one exact frog from north of the Palghat Gap, but they did not write about it because it had not been stopped from rotting.


References

Category:Frogs of Asia