Context:

• The latest addition to India’s frog fauna is the Mangaluru narrow-mouthed frog, which has been found in a small industrial region in coastal Karnataka.

Other details:

• The new find, described by a team of Indian scientists in the international journal Zootaxa on Tuesday, is christened Microhyla kodial after the city of Mangaluru (called kodial in the Konkani language) from where they spotted it two years ago.
• The frog is seen only in a small industrial region here — a former timber dumping yard — surrounded by seaport, petrochemical, chemical and refinery industries.
• The frog’s presence in this urban area could have been easily overlooked given its small size too: the greyish-brown frog is just 2 cm long. A thick olive-green band on its head, less-prominent dark green bands on the rest of its body and a few other physical features also set it apart from other similar-looking frogs. 
• The industrial patch where the frogs are currently found used to be a depot for timber imported from southeast Asia; therefore, the frogs could have been accidentally introduced with timber that came from Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, write the scientists.
• The Mangaluru narrow-mouthed frog is the 42nd species belonging to the genus Microhyla recorded from south Asia.
• More than 650 microhylids – or frogs belonging to the family Microhylidae – are found across the world’s tropics.

Source:TH