Hylarana aurantiaca
| Golden frog | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Amphibia |
| Order: | Anura |
| Family: | Ranidae |
| Genus: | Hylarana |
| Species: | H. aurantiaca |
| Binomial name | |
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Hylarana aurantiaca (Boulenger, 1904) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Hylarana aurantiaca, commonly known as the golden frog, is a species of frog endemic to the Western Ghats of India. The species is also known as the Trivandrum frog, the common wood frog, or the small wood frog.
Hylarana aurantiaca is a part of the well known frog genus Hylarana which is under the family Randiae.Hylarana aurantiaca was previously considered to be a possible species complex. Specimens recovered from Sri Lanka were previously misidentified as H. aurantiaca due to the lack of distinct color differences and morphological characteristics In 2014, a study confirmed that H. aurantiaca was endemic to the Western Ghats. There are no shared Hylarana species between the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. Using morphological and molecular data, seven new species were added to the Hylarana species that were previously known in the regions of the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. The "small-sized" H. aurantiaca recovered from Sri Lanka was discovered to be a previously undescribed species, Hylarana serendipi. There are four major groups of Hylarana species: H. aurantiaca which is endemic to the Western Ghats, H. flavescens which is endemic to the Western Ghats, H. temporalis which is endemic to Sri Lanka, and H. malabarica which is found in Sri Lanka and India.
The species was first described by the Belgian-British zoologist George Albert Boulenger in 1904 as Rana aurantiaca. The type locality of the species is in Trivandrum, and the holotype is preserved in the Natural History Museum (BM 1947.2.2.92 formerly 1903.9.26.1). It was variously classified under the subgenera Hylorana, Hylarana, and Sylvirana while under the genus Rana. It was reclassified under Hylarana when the subgenus was split off from Rana in 2005. It was briefly put in Sylvirana in 2006, but Sylvirana is now considered to be a junior synonym of Hylarana. By using the taxonomic approach, hidden diversity throughout the species was discovered.
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