In these classifications, species with males bearing horny spines on upper lip have been allocated to Vibrissaphora Liu, 1945 whereas the species without such a secondary sexual character were grouped into Leptobrachium. However, findings by Zheng & Fu (2008) on the phylogeny of species allocated to the subgenera Vibrissaphora and Leptobrachium have revealed that the species allocated to these two subgenera, do not form monophyletic groups; hence Vibrissaphora should be considered a synonym of Leptobrachium. The recent work of Matsui et al. (2010) confirms this result inasmuch as species with males bearing horny spines are part of a clade that also includes species without this character. They recognize, for the time, two groups, clade A and clade B that can be attributed the two names. But for these clades no morphological apomorphies are available, nor is a diagnosis possible. Therefore here we do not use subgeneric allocation, and if we use “Vibrissaphora", we explicitly refer to the species of Leptobrachium bearing spines on upper lip of adult males, not to a formal taxon.
Two species from the genus Leptobrachium are reported to be found in India: Leptobrachium smithi Matsui, Nabhitabhata & Panha, 1999 (Sengupta et al. 2001) and Leptobrachium hasseltii Tschudi, 1838 (BCCP CAMP Report 1998; Chanda 2002). While Leptobrachium smithi has been reported from Meghalaya, India (Ahmed et al. 2009), neighbouring Bangladesh (Reza 2009) and Myanmar (Das & Chanda 2004), records of Leptobrachium hasseltii are doubtful. Chanda (2002) reports specimens under this name from Meghalaya. This name has been largely used, but in recent works it applies to a species from Java and Bali (Brown et al. 2009). Hence the status of the species published as Leptobrachium hasseltii from India clearly needs further investigation. Download the complete report in PDF format here.
Source: Sanjay Sondhi, Zootaxa.
