AmphibiaChina 中国两栖类.

Conservation Status (definitions)

IUCN Red List Status Account CITES No CITES Listing National Status None Regional Status None

Description
Odorrana dulongensis is a slender, medium body frog described from four males and two females with a male snout-vent length ranging from 47.8 - 55.4 mm and 78.3 - 87.5 mm in females. The snout is pointed in the dorsal view and rounded in the profile. The snout protrudes over the lower jaw. The head is slightly longer than wide. The dorsolateral nostrils are nearer the snout than the eye. The canthus rostralis is prominent. The loreal region has a concave slope. The pineal body is visible. The interorbital distance is larger than the eyelid but shorter than the internarial distance. The tympanum is prominent and smaller than the eye diameter. The tympanic rim is raised proportional to the tympanum. The supratympanic lobe is prominent and slanted. The dorsal skin is granular, however, the dorsal head surface and ventral head, body, and limb surfaces are smooth. The forearms are robust and the hand has one prominent, oval thenar tubercle near Finger I, but no outer metacarpal tubercle. Nuptial pads can also be found on Finger I. The relative lengths of the fingers are as follows: I = II < IV < III. All fingers expand at the tips, save finger I, and all discs have circummarginal grooves. There are no lateral fringes or webbing on the fingers. The subarticular tubercles of the fingers are distinct. The hind limbs are long, with the tibia being longer than the thigh. The prominent inner metatarsal tubercle is oval and there is no outer metatarsal tubercle. The toes are narrow and long, with their relative lengths being as follows: I < II < III < V < IV. The toe webbing formula is I 0 – ½ II 0 - ½ III 0 - 1 IV 1 – 0 V. The tips of the toes are all expanded into oval disks with circummarginal grooves. The prominent subarticular tubercles of the toes are longitudinally oval (Liu et al. 2021).

DIAGNOSIS:

Odorrana dulongensis is closely related to O. andersonii, O. grahami, O. jingdongensis, O. kuangwuensis, O. margaretae, and O. wuchuaensis, and may be differentiated from these species by its lack of outer metatarsal tubercles, lack of spines on the venter, and presence of paired, external, subgular male vocal sacs. Furthermore, the presences of digital discs in O. dulongensis differentiated it from O. grahami and the lack of spots on the toe webbing in O. dulongensis differentiated it from O. kuangwuensis (Liu et al. 2021, for more comparisons please see the citation).

COLORATION:

In life, O. dulongenesis is a grass-green color with black spots on the posterior. The flanks are light yellow and speckled with black spots. The dorsal surfaces of the forelimbs are olive brown, with black bands across them and sporadic grass-green spots. The dorsal surfaces of the hind limbs are also olive brown with black bands. There are black spots on the upper portion of the jaw, while the lower jaw is yellow with black spots. The loreal region has black and green spots. The ventral surfaces of the chest, and belly are not marked, but the throat may have some light mottling. When preserved, the grass-green dorsum fades to dark olive while the olive brown of the limbs fades to whitish-gray. The grass-green spots in the loreal region also fade to whitish-gray (Liu et al. 2021).

VARIATION:

The number of black dorsal spots varies within the species. Some individuals have light mottling on the throat. Female specimens are larger than males in all measurements (Liu et al. 2021).

Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: China

View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.

At the time of the species description, O. dulongenesis was only known from Dulongjiang village, Gongshan county, Nujiang Prefecture, Yunnan, China. More specifically, the species was found in evergreen, broad-leaf forests along a stretch of the Dulong River that was 30 - 50 m wide across the river. Given the proximity of the habitat to Myanmar, it is likely that the distribution of the species extends into that country (Liu et al. 2021).

Life History, Abundance, Activity, and Special Behaviors
The species is relatively rare as its locality is difficult to access. However, individuals were found at night on branches along the Dulong River. Odorrana species prefer mountain environments and high gradient streams (Liu et al. 2021) and montane streams in subtropical and tropical regions (Li et al. 2018).

Odorrana dulongensis is found in sympatry with Zhangixalus burmanus and Duttaphrynus cyphosus (Liu et al. 2021).

Larva
Odorrana species have a larval stage (Ampai et al. 2015).

Trends and Threats
There is a downward trend in total area covered by forest in the Yunnan Province (Gao et al. 2021). Additionally, the diversity in the genus Odorrana is underestimated, especially in Myanmar (Liu et al. 2021), which, in addition to habitat loss, may pose difficulties in conservation efforts.

Relation to Humans
Antimicrobial peptides can be found in the skin of Chinese frogs in the genus Odorrana, which may be used to combat microorganisms that are resistant to antibiotics (Yang et al. 2011).

Comments

PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS:

Phylogenetic relationships were estimated using 16S ribosomal RNA sequence data with maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses. Those results found that O. dulongenesis is sister to a clade containing O. andersonii, O. graham, O. jingdongenesis, O. junlianensis,O. kuangwuensus, and O. margaretae. The next most closely related clade is O. wuchuaensis (Liu et al. 2021).

ETYMOLOGY:

The species epithet, “dulongensis,” refers to where the species was found, Dulongjiang village, Gongshan county, Nujiang Prefecture, Yunnan, China (Liu et al. 2021).

References
Ampai, N., Rujirawan, A., Arkajag, J., Mcleod, D. S., & Aowphol, A. (2015). Description of the tadpoles of two endemic frogs: the Phu Luang cascade frog Odorrana aureola (Anura: Ranidae) and the Isan big-headed frog Limnonectes isanensis (Anura: Dicroglossidae) from northeastern Thailand. Zootaxa, 3981(4), 508-520. [link]

Gao, B. P., Li, C., Wu, Y. M., Zheng, K. J., & Wu, Y. (2021). Landscape ecological risk assessment and influencing factors in ecological conservation area in Sichuan-Yunnan provinces, China. The Journal of Applied Ecology, 32(5), 1603-1613. [link]

Li, S., Xu, N., Lv, J., Jiang, J., Wei, G., & Wang, B. (2018). A new species of the odorous frog genus Odorrana (Amphibia, Anura, Ranidae) from southwestern China. PeerJ, 6, e5695. [link]

Liu, X. L., He, Y. H., Wang, Y. F., Beukema, W., Hou, S. B., Li, Y. C., Che, J. & Yuan, Z. Y. (2021). A new frog species of the genus Odorrana (Anura: Ranidae) from Yunnan, China. Zootaxa, 4908(2), 263-275. [link]

Yang, X., Lee, W. H., & Zhang, Y. (2012). Extremely abundant antimicrobial peptides existed in the skins of nine kinds of Chinese odorous frogs. Journal of proteome research, 11(1), 306-319. [link]

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2023 Odorrana dulongensis <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/9314> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed May 16, 2025.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2025. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 16 May 2025.

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