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Roberts et al. (2022) presented a taxonomic decision, in which they proposed the species name longhagen for a single, poorly preserved specimen of elapid New Guinean snake in the species assemblage known as the Toxicocalamus loriae Group. Geographically widespread populations in this species group had long been united under a single name even though some character variation had been noted, and only a thorough morphological study by Kraus et al. (2022), published shortly after the description of T. longhagen, confirmed additional species-level diversity and the detail of character analysis needed to differentiate species in this group. Their work made clear that only examination of many specimens would allow an assessment of interspecific variation and species boundaries, and this had been explained to the authors of the Roberts et al. paper ahead of their manuscript submission. The authors of the Kraus et al. paper had examined the specimen used to diagnose T. longhagen, as well as a series of similar specimens, and found it impossible to make a reliable species-level determination. Our detailed evaluation of the taxon longhagen reveals that it is insufficiently differentiated from the now-known species of the T. loriae Group, that it cannot confidently be assigned to any of these species, and that none of the existing specimens of snakes in this group can be assigned to T. longhagen. It follows that T. longhagen as currently defined is a taxonomic nomen dubium. It will retain this status until such time when additional data or additional material can lead to a resolution of its taxonomy. 

Frogs in the family Ranidae are diverse in Asia and are thought to have dispersed to the Sahul Shelf approximately 10 million years ago, where they radiated into more than a dozen species. Ranid species in the intervening oceanic islands of Wallacea, such as Hylarana florensis and H. elberti from the Lesser Sundas and H. moluccana from eastern Wallacea, are assumed to belong to the subgenus Papurana, yet this has not been confirmed with molecular data. We analyzed mitochondrial DNA of Hylarana species from five islands spanning the reported ranges of H. florensis and H. elberti and compared them to confirmed Papurana species and closely related subgenera within Hylarana. We find that the Lesser Sunda H. florensis and H. elberti form a clade that is sister to the rest of the Australo-Papuan Papurana assemblage. Species delimitation analyses and divergence time estimates suggest that populations of H. florensis on Lombok may be distinct from those on Flores at the species level. Likewise, populations of H. elberti on Sumba and Timor may be distinct from each other and from those on Wetar, tshe type locality of H. elberti. Samples from Babar Island thought to be members of H. elberti in fact belong to the wide-ranging H. daemeli, which occurs in northern Australia, across New Guinea, and on the neighboring island of Tanimbar. These results suggest that the Lesser Sundas may have served as a stepping-stone for colonization of the Sahul Shelf and that species diversity of Papurana frogs is underestimated in the Lesser Sundas.