A New Species of the Scinax Eurydice Group (anura: Hylidae: Scinaxini) from the Amazonian Forests of Northern Peru

We describe a new species, the fourth of the Scinax eurydice species group and the first one of this group found in Peru. The other three species, S. castroviejoi, S. sateremawe, and S. eurydice, are distributed across the Andes in Bolivia, the western Amazon basin of Brazil, and northeastern and southeastern Brazil, respectively. We describe the new species and use external morphological traits, such as the color pattern of flanks and inguinal region and vocal sac structure, to differentiate it from related species in the group. A phylogenetic analysis placed the new species as the sister taxon of S. sateremawe & thorn; S. castroviejoi. Uncorrected pairwise distances in the 16S ribosomal gene fragment between the new species and the other three in the group vary from 12.6 to 15.5% and greatly exceed the thresholds commonly used to distinguish Neotropical treefrog species. Additionally, the weakly bilobate vocal sac in the new species, shared with S. castroviejoi and S. sateremawe, may represent a synapomorphy of this clade of the S. eurydice group.