A New Species of Leptolalax from Sarawak, Western Borneo (Anura: Megophryidae)

A new megophryid species is described from southwestern Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. In appearance, Leptolalax marmoratus sp. nov. is most similar to L. hamidi also from southwestern Sarawak, but differs from it by mtDNA sequence, larger body size, and higher dominant frequency of advertisement call. The assumption that more than one species of Leptolalax coexist at one locality in Borneo is supported. The finding of the new species raises the species number of Leptolalax known from Borneo to nine, and the island is thought to be one of the diversification centers of the genus

Venomous Snakes and Envenomation in Brunei

The venomous snakes recorded from Brunei Darussalam are enumerated. A total of 19 species, representing two families (Elapidae, 15 species, and Viperidae, four species), have been recorded in the country. For each species, there is a brief description of biology, localities, and references. Antivenom sera available at RIPAS Hospital are listed and annotated with their potential use. Apart from bites from venomous snakes, the presence of one “spitter,” the equatorial cobra, Naja sumatrana, increases the risk of humans to venom ophthalmia. Finally, future directions for research and management of snake envenomation, and for enhancing knowledge of the country’s snakes for conservation and improving health care, are discussed

Environmental constraints and call evolution in torrent-dwelling frogs

Although acoustic signals are important for communication in many taxa, signal propagation is affected by environmental properties. Strong environmental constraints should drive call evolution, favoring signals with greater transmission distance and content integrity in a given calling habitat. Yet, few empirical studies have verified this prediction, possibly due to a shortcoming in habitat characterization, which is often too broad. Here we assess the potential impact of environmental constraints on the evolution of advertisement call in four groups of torrent-dwelling frogs in the family Ranidae. We reconstruct the evolution of calling site preferences, both broadly categorized and at a finer scale, onto a phylogenetic tree for 148 species with five markers (approximate to 3600 bp). We test models of evolution for six call traits for 79 species with regard to the reconstructed history of calling site preferences and estimate their ancestral states. We find that in spite of existing morphological constraints, vocalizations of torrent-dwelling species are most probably constrained by the acoustic specificities of torrent habitats and particularly their high level of ambient noise. We also show that a fine-scale characterization of calling sites allows a better perception of the impact of environmental constraints on call evolution