Taxonomic notes on the Asian frogs of the tribe Paini (Ranidae, Dicroglossinae): 1. Morphology and synonymy of Chaparana aenea (Smith, 1922), with proposal of a new statistical method for testing homogeneity of small samples

The species from northern Vietnam described as Rana fansipani Bourret, 1939 is shown to be a synonym of the species from northern Thailand described as Rana aenea Smith, 1922. The male secondary sex characters of this species are described in detail for the first time. Combined with a few other characters, they allow this species to be distinguished from the closely related Rana unculuanus Liu, Hu and Yang, 1960 from southern China.

Both species should be placed in a subgenus Chaparana (Chaparana), a member of the tribe Paini of the subfamily Dicroglossinae of the Ranidae. In this study, we propose a new statistical method for testing homogeneity of small samples: this consists of considering the values obtained for each specimen and for each regression factor score as morphometric characteristics of this specimen within the frame of this analysis; these values, or some of them, can be used to compare subgroups of specimens by non-parametric tests such as the Mann– Whitney U test.