Rhacophorus bipunctatus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Rhacophorus bipunctatus |
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Rhacophorus bimaculatus Boulenger, 1882 (non Peters, 1867: preoccupied) |
In some books and articles from 1999 onwards, the name Rhacophorus bipunctatus might also refer to another frog called R. rhodopus. You can learn more about this in the "Taxonomy" section.
The Rhacophorus bipunctatus is a type of frog from the moss frog family, called Rhacophoridae. You can find this frog in places like eastern India and across Southeast Asia. It might even live in southeastern China and as far south as Malaysia. Because it's been hard to identify this frog correctly, we don't know its exact range. But we are sure it lives where India, Bangladesh, China, and Myanmar meet. Frogs that look similar have been seen in Pahang, Malaysia, so its home might stretch further south.
This frog has a very confusing scientific name. Its name has been changed twice. It was also described under different names two times, more than 130 years apart! Another frog species was also mistaken for it. It wasn't until 2007 that scientists finally became sure about which frog the name R. bipunctatus truly belongs to.
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What Does the Rhacophorus bipunctatus Look Like?
The R. bipunctatus is a small tree frog with a pointy nose. Adult frogs are about 37 to 60 mm long, with females usually being bigger than males. When they are alive, their backs can be bright green or even violet-brown. After they are preserved, this color changes to blue or violet. You won't see any clear patterns on their backs, but they might have tiny white or dark spots. Their arms and legs have very faint darker stripes.
The sides of their body, their belly, and their toes are bright yellow. This color turns a dull pink when the frogs are preserved. There is almost always a large, clear black spot behind their arms on their sides. Sometimes, there might be one or two more black spots closer to their back legs. Very rarely, these spots are completely missing. The skin between their toes, called webbing, is well-developed and bright orange-red. It doesn't have spots and turns whitish when preserved. Their eyes are a dull green, sometimes with yellow edges.
You can tell R. bipunctatus apart from R. rhodopus, which it was often confused with. The R. bipunctatus is larger (R. rhodopus is about 31–55 mm long). Its back is not spotted and often has some green or olive color, or it might be completely green. In contrast, R. rhodopus has a reddish-brown back with darker spots and no green colors. If you compare frogs of similar size, the R. bipunctatus has a much bigger head.
Where Does This Frog Live and How Is It Doing?
This frog lives in natural habitats like warm, wet montane forests (forests on mountains). It also likes high-altitude shrubland (areas with bushes), rivers that sometimes dry up, and freshwater marshes (wetlands). You can also find it in plantations (farms where crops are grown) and gardens in the countryside. It lives at heights from a few hundred meters ASL (above sea level) to over 2,000 meters ASL. We are not sure if this frog ever lives in lower areas.
In 2004, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) said that R. bipunctatus was a Species of Least Concern. This means they thought it was not in danger. However, at that time, they included R. rhodopus under the same name. We don't know if the real R. bipunctatus lives all over Southeast Asia like R. rhodopus does. The information we have suggests it is only found for sure in a small area in the hills and mountains where India, China, and Myanmar meet. We need to find out more about the similar frogs seen in Pahang, Malaysia. So, it's probably better to say that this frog is a Data Deficient species. This means we don't have enough information to know if it's truly safe or in danger. Interestingly, another name for this frog, R. htunwini, was also listed as Data Deficient by the IUCN in 2006 for the same reasons.
The Confusing History of Its Name
This frog has a very complicated taxonomy, which is how scientists classify living things. Even for the genus Rhacophorus, which is known for confusing names, this frog's story is wild! When it was first found in 1870, people thought it was a type of black-webbed tree frog called Rhacophorus reinwardtii.
In 1871, John Anderson officially described it as R. maculatus. He collected five frogs from the Khasi Hills in India. These frogs, called syntypes, were put in the ZSI collection. Seven other frogs from the Khasi Hills, collected by Thomas C. Jerdon, were placed in the NMH. These are also considered part of the original group because Anderson mentioned them in his description. The ZSI frogs might have been lost later. In 2007, one of the NMH frogs, collected by Jerdon in 1870, was chosen as the main example, called a lectotype.
Why the Name Kept Changing
Soon after, scientists realized that another frog, Polypedates maculatus, had already been named Rhacophorus maculatus many years earlier by John E. Gray. This meant Anderson's name was already taken, like two people having the same name for different things. This is called a homonym.
In 1882, George A. Boulenger tried to fix this by suggesting a new name for Anderson's frog: R. bimaculatus. But in 1927, Ernst Ahl discovered that a frog described in 1867 by Wilhelm Peters as Leptomantis bimaculata was also a Rhacophorus. So, Boulenger's new name was also already taken! Ahl finally solved the problem by giving the frog its current official name, Rhacophorus bipunctatus. This was 50 years after scientists first noticed the frog.
The Mix-Up with R. rhodopus and R. htunwini
Often, another frog called R. rhodopus (first described in 1960) was thought to be the same species as R. bipunctatus. However, when this idea was suggested in 1999, scientists didn't check the original example frogs (called holotypes) or frogs from the exact place where R. rhodopus was found. In fact, the frogs they thought were R. bipunctatus were from places where that species isn't known to live.
When proper comparisons were finally made almost 10 years later, it turned out that R. rhodopus was actually the same as frogs described in 1985 as R. namdaphaensis. So, the older name R. rhodopus became the correct name for those frogs.
This confusion caused even more problems. In 2005, a moss frog similar to R. rhodopus (which was then mistakenly called R. bipunctatus and R. namdaphaensis) was described as Htun Win's tree frog (Rhacophorus htunwini). The scientists who described it thought R. rhodopus was the same as R. bipunctatus. So, they only compared their "new" frog to the wrongly identified R. rhodopus, not to the actual R. bipunctatus. Luckily, they didn't compare it to frogs called R. namdaphaensis, even though they looked similar and lived nearby.
This whole situation was finally sorted out in 2007. Scientists found that the differences between R. htunwini and the original R. bipunctatus were too small and varied too much between individual frogs. This meant R. htunwini was just another name for R. bipunctatus.
So, because scientists didn't compare R. rhodopus with the original R. bipunctatus examples, the frog that had been known for over 130 years was described again under a new name! There are still a few questions about how all these similar-looking frogs are related, especially since they sometimes live in the same areas (sympatric). To truly solve these mysteries, scientists might need to study the DNA from the original frog examples.
