It took seven years, yes 7, for this manuscript to finally see the light of day. Stoked to see my undergraduate thesis in print! So what did we do? 1/n https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237431

A number of researchers in @kartik_shanker 's lab including SP Vijayakumar, @HSaunak and others were sampling for herpetofauna across the Western Ghats between 2009 and 2013.

They came across a problem - Why was it that amphibians and even reptiles that were sampled hundreds of kilometres apart, look so similar, and are potentially different species? (Take a look at an example from our study - the Indirana genus).

So species that are morphologically similar, but are genetically distinct are termed cryptic species. For example, you might observe an Indirana semipalmata in Kerala and 100km apart you will probably see something similar to Indirana semipalmata but is in fact Indirana beddomii.

So how did we go about figuring out if these are indeed different species?

We used a combination of techniques, that included molecular data, morphological data, and geographical data, within a rigorous statistical framework to distinguish one cryptic species from another.

First, we used molecular tools to obtain the DNA sequences for specimens collected in the field.

Second, detailed morphological measurements were recorded for each individual (See Walkerana diplosticta)

We combined the above two datasets to show that there were no differences in morphology irrespective of how far apart specimens they were collected across the Western Ghats or how genetically different they were.

In other words, two individuals of the Indirana genus might be collected hundreds of kilometres apart, but they would appear morphologically similar and yet harbor distinct genetic signatures (2% to 11% on a single gene)

The cool thing about this study is that these individuals are millions of years old, yet they haven't diverged much in morphological space, and that's something ecologists are still trying to understand :)

To know more, take a look at our paper.

n/n The paper is open-access and you should be able to click the link without having to hit a paywall.