Guwahati: A team of researchers from Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has discovered and described a new species of cascade-dwelling frog from Nagaland, naming it ‘Amolops Kamal’ in honour of Dr Kamal Choudhury, former head of the department of Zoology at B Barooah College, Guwahati.“I was a student of Dr Choudhury during his undergraduate years at B Borooah College. In recognition of his mentorship and inspiration, we decided to dedicate the newly discovered species to Dr Choudhury, who passed away on 1 Dec 2025,” said Bhaskar Saikia, who is the lead author of the research paper.The discovery was published in the latest issue of the ‘Records of the Zoological Survey of India’. The specimens of the new species were collected from Singrep village in Kiphire district of Nagaland in Aug 2024 by a team of scientists from ZSI, Shillong.“The integrative taxonomic study, carried out in collaboration with scientists from ZSI, Pune, revealed that the specimens represent a distinct evolutionary lineage within the Amolops indoburmanensis species complex, a group long suspected to contain multiple cryptic species across the northeast India and Myanmar. This confirms that ‘Amolops indoburmanensis’, is not a widespread species, but actually a group of several distinct evolutionary lineages,” Saikia also said.The genus Amolops currently comprises around 90 recognised species globally, of which 20 have been reported from India. “Species of this genus are often very similar morphologically which make them difficult to distinguish based solely on morphology, making molecular phylogenetic analyses essential for accurately identifying this group of frogs,” he said.The study also highlights the remarkable but largely unexplored amphibian diversity of the northeast India. Researchers have called for further surveys and genetic studies across the region, stating that many more undiscovered amphibian species may still exist in the forests and mountain ecosystems of the northeast.
The new species of cascade-dwelling frog from Nagaland
