New Species, Diversity, Systematics, And Conservation Assessment Of The Puppet Toads Of Sumatra (Anura: Bufonidae: Sigalegalephrynus)

Using a combination of morphological and molecular data we recognize three new species of Puppet Toad, Sigalegalephrynus Smart, Sarker, Arifin, Harvey, Sidik, Hamidy, Kurniawan & Smith, a recently described genus endemic to the highland forests of Sumatra, Indonesia. Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences recovered a monophyletic relationship among all Puppet Toads, with two distinct evolutionary clades, a northern and a southern. The northern Glade includes Sigalegalephrynus gayoluesensis sp. nov., and S. burnitelongensis sp. nov., and the southern Glade includes S. harveyi sp. nov., S. mandailinguensis, and S. minangkabauensis. With the discovery of these three new species, Sigalegalephrynus contains more endemic species than any other genus of toad in Indonesia. We used maximum entropy, implemented in MaxEnt, to identify suitable habitats and occurrence probability of additional undescribed new species from the island. The most important predictors of Sigalegalephrynus distribution were elevation (64.5%) and land cover (7.11%). Based on the probability of presence, it is likely that there are many more species of the genus awaiting discovery in Sumatra. Our analysis, based on IUCN Red List of Threatened Species category and criteria, shows that all of the five species of Sigalegalephrynus are in great risk of extinction and should be placed into the Endangered (EN) category of IUCN Red List.