Historically, most researchers have held that Iran is occupied by only one tree frog species, Hyla savignyi Audouin, 1827 [“1809”] (Leviton et al., 1992; Baloutch and Kami, 1995). According to Cheatsazan et al. (2005), the species is distributed in the northern and southwestern part of the country. However, Litvinchuk et al. (2006) recently suggested that the northern part could be occupied by Hyla arborea gumilevskii Litvinchuk, Borkin, Rosanov, Skorinov, 2006, which they described from southwestern Azerbaijan from the Talysh Mts. (cross-border mountains between Azerbaijan and Iran; in Iran, usually spelled the Talesh Mts.). These authors also listed 15 locality records from the literature and morphologically investigated 13 museum voucher individuals from Iran, which they assigned to H. arborea gumilevskii. However, Gvoždík, Moravec and Kratochvíl (2008) demonstrated that morphometric characters do not distinguish between H. arborea and H. savignyi, and further suggested that the colour pattern of the inguinal region (i.e. inguinal loop present in H. arborea) is a more appropriate character for interspecific diagnosis. Nevertheless, H.

arborea gumilevskii is characterized by a reduction or even absence of the inguinal loop (Litvinchuk et al., 2006), which makes it morphologically almost indistinguishable from H. savignyi. Thus, occurrence of H. arborea in Iran has been adopted only provisionally and considered “uncertain” (Kaya et al., 2008; Schneider, 2009; Schneider and Grosse, 2009). Recently, Stöck et al. (2008) split H. arborea into three species based on molecular data, and resurrected the name Hyla orientalis Bedriaga, 1890 [“1889”] for the eastern populations including H. arborea gumilevskii, which was thereby synonymized with H. orientalis. Herein, the occurrence of H. orientalis in Iran is confirmed based on species-specific acoustic data.

The recordings of tree frogs advertisement calls were obtained from four localities in Iran during short-term field survey in May–June 2005: (1) 12 km E of Qareh Ziya Eddin, 38.89° N, 45.02° E, 16.5 – 18.5 °C, n = 3; (2) 10 km W of Mianeh, 37.41° N, 47.72° E, 20.0 °C, n = 2; (3) Tonekabon, 36.81° N, 50.88° E, 21.0 °C, n = 2; (4) Motalla Sara-ye Lemir, 38.20° N, 48.87° E, 18.5 – 20.5 °C, n = 3 (Fig. 1A; coordinates are approximate, taken from maps). In all localities, the frogs were found in rice fields. However, localities 1 and 2 were situated in arid, semi-desert areas, while localities 3 and 4 were in wet, subtropical ecozones. The audio recordings were taken with an Olympus DM-1 portable recorder with Sony ECM-MS907 electret condenser microphone. Environmental temperature was measured by Viking AB 06912 digital thermometer in the exact place occupied by the calling male. The calls

Herpetology Notes, volume 3: 041-044 (2010) (published online on 10 February 2010)

Second species of tree frog, Hyla orientalis (formely H. arborea), from Iran confirmed by acoustic data

Václav Gvoždík1,2*

1 Department of Zoology, National Museum, 115 79 Prague, Czech Republic;

e-mail: vgvozdik@email.cz2 Department of Vertebrate Evolutionary Biology and Genetics,

Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 277 21 Liběchov, Czech Republic.

* corresponding author

Abstract. Presence of a second tree frog species, Hyla orientalis, from Iran is confirmed based on advertisement call. According to available data, it seems that H. orientalis occupies the lowlands along the southern Caspian coast and presumably also the eastern slopes of the Talesh Mts. and the northern slopes of the Alborz Mts. The widely distributed H. savignyi is present west- and southwards from these mountain systems.

Keywords. Hyla orientalis; Hyla arborea; Hyla savignyi; distribution; Iran; bioacoustics.

Václav Gvoždík42

Figure 1. (A). Map of north western Iran showing localities where recordings of advertisement calls were taken; H. savignyi (circles), H. orientalis (triangles), Talesh Mts. (T) and Alborz Mts. (A). Numbers correspond to the list in the text. Advertisement calls of (B) H. savignyi (12 km E of Qareh Ziya Eddin, loc. 1, 16.5 °C) and (C) H. orientalis (Tonekabon, loc. 3, 21.0 °C) as represented by oscillograms and respective spectrograms of the call segments (pulse groups) at 1 s sections. In the background, an alternating calling male is evident in-between the call segments of the focal calling specimen of H. savignyi. Photographs of calling males of (D) H. savignyi (10 km W of Mianeh, loc. 2) and (E) H. orientalis (Motalla Sara-ye Lemir, loc. 4) demonstrate that the two species are morphologically very similar to each other in Iran because the Caspian populations of the latter have a strongly reduced or absent inguinal loop.

Acoustic data on Hyla orientalis from Iran 43

were analyzed in BatSound–Sound Analysis version 1.2 software (Pettersson Elektronik AB). Oscillograms and spectrograms were investigated, and the call segment (pulse group sensu Schneider, 2004) length and the number of pulses per segment were measured and counted, respectively. Averaged values were taken from five consecutive call segments from the middle of the call.

The recordings were not made by a professional audio recorder and the conditions were not ideal during some recording sessions due to a chorus of many calling frogs present. However, these recordings do allowed for an analysis of the main call characteristics, which clearly separate the recorded advertisement calls into two distinct groups. The advertisement calls from the localities 1 and 2 (Kurdistan and south-west of the Talesh Mts.) had longer call segments and higher number of pulses (163 ms and 140 ms, 133 – 169 ms; 18.6 and 19.4 pulses, 18 – 20 pulses; means for loc. 1 and 2, respectively, and ranges of both localities; Fig. 1B) than the advertisement calls recorded in the localities 3 and 4 on the southern Caspian coast (76 ms and 79 ms, 72 – 81 ms; 8.6 and 8.4 pulses, 8 – 9 pulses; means for loc. 3 and 4, respectively, and ranges of both localities; Fig. 1C).

The above results indicate that the recorded advertisement calls from the two groups are very distinct, and thus belong to two species. The slight difference in call segment lengths between loc. 1 and loc. 2 likely corresponds to the difference in temperatures. The calls from the inland clearly correspond to H. savignyi, while the calls from the Caspian coast are assignable to the H. arborea-like type (e.g. cf. Schneider, 2004). This finding agrees with the assumptions of Litvinchuk et al. (2006), who expected H. arborea to be present in northern Iran. However, according to the current taxonomy (Stöck et al., 2008), the Caspian population should be named H. orientalis. This taxon has a circum-Pontic distribution including Asia Minor and the Caucasus (Stöck et al., 2008; Gvoždík et al., in press) and has the same (or very similar) advertisement call as H. arborea. Schneider (2000, 2004) demonstrated that tree frogs from western Turkey and northern Armenia (both formerly H. arborea, now assigned to H. orientalis) possess similar advertisement calls to that of H. arborea from Germany. Thus, the obtained acoustic data suggest that the Irano-Caspian populations belong to H. orientalis, and not to H. savignyi (Fig. 1E). This finding was recently confirmed also genetically (Gvoždík et al., in press). No H. savignyi calls were detected among the recordings from the Caspian region.

Based on the data obtained, it can be hypothesized that the wet, subtropical Caspian coast in Iran is inhabited by H. orientalis, while H. savignyi (Fig. 1D) is distributed west- and southwards from the Talesh and Alborz Mts. in semiarid or arid habitats. It seems that the two species are mutually parapatric in Iran, however more data (acoustic or genetic) are needed to clarify the situation. Cheatsazan et al. (2005) and Kami (2005) published a north-eastward range extension of H. savignyi as they discovered a remote population in the Golestan Province. In the light of current findings, it is more likely that the Golestanian population represents H. orientalis. Nevertheless, farther data coming from the Golestanian tree frogs must be investigated to confirm this preliminary assumption.

Acknowledgements. The study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation GA CR 206/05/2334, the Biodiversity Research Centre grant No. LC06073, and grants Nos. MK00002327201 and IRP IAPG AV0Z 50450515. Many thanksIRP IAPG AV0Z 50450515. Many thanks. Many thanks are given to J. Moravec (Prague) for improving the first version of the manuscript, D. C. Blackburn (Lawrence) for help with the English and general discussion, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments.

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Václav Gvoždík44

Accepted by Angelica Crottini; Managing Editor: Hamed Cheatsazan