Taxonomic notes on the Asian frogs of the tribe Paini (Ranidae, Dicroglossinae): 1. Morphology and synonymy ofChaparana aenea(Smith, 1922), with proposal of a new statistical method for testing homogeneity of small samples

Abstract

The species from northern Vietnam described as Rana fansipani Bourret, 1939 Bourret, R . 1939. Notes herpétologiques sur l'Indochine française. XVII. Reptiles et Batraciens reçus au Laboratoire des Sciences Naturelles de l'Université au cours de l'année 1938. Descriptions de trois espèces nouvelles.. Annexe du Bulletin Général de l'Instruction Publique, 6: 13–34, 1 plate is shown to be a synonym of the species from northern Thailand described as Rana aenea Smith, 1922 Smith, MA . 1922. Notes on Reptiles and Batrachians from Siam and Indo‐China (No. 1).. Journal of the Federal Natural History Society of Siam, 4(4): 203–214, Plate 8 . The male secondary sex characters of this species are described in detail for the first time. Combined with a few other characters, they allow this species to be distinguished from the closely related Rana unculuanus Liu, Hu and Yang, 1960 from southern China. Both species should be placed in a subgenus Chaparana (Chaparana), a member of the tribe Paini of the subfamily Dicroglossinae of the Ranidae. In this study, we propose a new statistical method for testing homogeneity of small samples: this consists of considering the values obtained for each specimen and for each regression factor score as morphometric characteristics of this specimen within the frame of this analysis; these values, or some of them, can be used to compare subgroups of specimens by non‐parametric tests such as the Mann–Whitney U test.