Quasipaa

Quasipaa is a genus of frogs in the family Dicroglossidae. The genus has no established common name, but many individual species are referred to as spiny frogs. They occur in East and Southeast Asia, from Thailand and Cambodia to southern and eastern China.^[1]

Quasipaa
Quasipaa exilispinosa
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Anura
Family:	Dicroglossidae
Subfamily:	Dicroglossinae
Genus:	Quasipaa Dubois, 1992
Type species
Rana boulengeri Günther, 1889

Taxonomy

Quasipaa was first proposed as a subgenus of Paa (now considered to belong to Nanorana). It was subsequently raised to the level of genus, and molecular phylogenetic analyses have corroborated the monophyly of Quasipaa.^[1]

Many individual species were originally described in genus Rana.^[1] Even after splitting the very wide Rana into smaller taxa, frogs now in Quasipaa continued to belong to the true frog family (Ranidae), at times as subfamily Dicroglossinae, until Dicroglossinae was raised to the family level (i.e., Dicroglossidae). The taxonomy of Dicroglossidae is far from settled yet.^[2]

Species

There are 11 species in this genus:^[1]

• Quasipaa acanthophora Dubois and Ohler, 2009
• Quasipaa boulengeri (Günther, 1889)
• Quasipaa courtoisi (Angel, 1922)
• Quasipaa delacouri (Angel, 1928)
• Quasipaa exilispinosa (Liu and Hu, 1975)
• Quasipaa fasciculispina (Inger, 1970)
• Quasipaa jiulongensis (Huang and Liu, 1985)
• Quasipaa shini (Ahl, 1930)
• Quasipaa spinosa (David, 1875)
• Quasipaa verrucospinosa (Bourret, 1937)
• Quasipaa yei (Chen, Qu, and Jiang, 2002)

Conservation and use

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed ten species of Quasipaa. One them is "Data deficient", another one "Near threatened, and the remaining ones are either "Vulnerable" or "Endangered". Quasipaa can be relatively large frogs, and many are collected for consumption. They are also threatened by habitat loss.^[3]