A new species record of Ichthyophis moustakius Kamei, Wilkinson, Gower, and Biju, 2009 (Gymnophiona: Ichthyophiidae) from China

We report a new species record of Ichthyophis moustakius for China, from southern Gaoligong Mountain, Yunnan Province, based on morphological comparisons with the original description and molecular phylogenetic analysis. Phylogenetically, our newly collected samples clustered with mitochondrial DNA sequences of recognized I. moustakius specimens from India. Based on 16S rRNA gene, the uncorrected pairwise distances of I. moustakius between the specimens from China and India were small, ranging from 1.2-2.6%. Morphologically, the specimens from Yingjiang County closely matched those from the type locality Manipur, India. In addition, the analyses of the cytb gene also confirmed that the specimens collected from Yingjiang in China were not Ichthyophis kohtaoensis. Our study increases the number of Ichthyophis species known to occur from China to three and provides the morphological description of both adult and larval stages.