Amphibian Species of the World 5.6, an Online Reference

Silurana tropicalis Gray, 1864, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 3, 14: 316. Type(s): Not stated, but BMNH 1947.2.24.83-86 (formerly 1864.9.22.1-4) recorded as types in museum records. Type locality: "West Africa, Lagos", Nigeria.

Silurana intertropicalis — Günther, 1865, Zool. Rec., 1: 127. Misspelling.

Xenopus (Dactylethra) calcaratus Peters, 1875, Monatsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1875: 200. Syntypes: ZMB 8326 (2 specimens), 8328 (4 specimens), 8329, 8255 (2 specimens), according to Bauer, Günther, and Robeck, 1996, Mitt. Zool. Mus. Berlin, 72: 269 ; 2 specimens in ZMG according to Herrmann, 1989, Veröff. Naturhist. Mus. Schleusingen, 4: 13. Type locality: "Cameruns (Victoria)"; given incorrectly by Schiøtz, 1963, Vidensk. Medd. Dansk Naturhist. Foren., 125: 14, as "Lagos". Synonymy by Müller, 1910, Abh. Math. Physik. Cl. Bayer. Akad. Wiss., 24: 625.

Xenopus tropicalis — Müller, 1910, Abh. Math. Physik. Cl. Bayer. Akad. Wiss., 24: 625. Pauly, Hillis, and Cannatella, 2009, Herpetologica, 65: 126.

Silurana tropicalis — Cannatella and Trueb, 1988, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 94: 1-38.

Xenopus (Silurana) tropicalis — Kobel, Loumont, and Tinsley, 1996, in Tinsley and Kobel (eds.), Biol. Xenopus: 21. Kobel, Barandun, and Thiebaud, 1998, Herpetol. J., 8: 13.

English Names

Tropical Clawed Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 96).

Forest Clawed Frog (Barnett, Emms, and Santoni, 2001, Herpetol. Bull., London, 77: 8).

Distribution

Forested West Africa from Senegal to Cameroon.

Comment

Loumont, 1983, Rev. Suisse Zool., 90: 176, restricted Xenopus tropicalis to the west of tropical Africa only, and considered that records to the south and east (including the Congo Basin) belong to Xenopus epitropicalis. Synonymy includes Xenopus calcaratus. Most primitive of the Xenopus species, set apart from the rest of the genus by chromosome number (2n=20) ( Tymowska, 1973, Cytogenet. Cell Genet., 12: 298), osteology ( Estes, 1975, Herpetologica, 31: 269), serum albumins ( Bisbee, Baker, Wilson, Hadji-Azimi, and Fischberg, 1977, Science, 195: 785-787), and other characters ( Tinsley, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 140). Rödel, 2000, Herpetofauna W. Afr., 1: 36-41, provided an account. Rödel and Branch, 2002, Salamandra, 38: 251, reported the species in Ivory Coast. Schiøtz, 1963, Vidensk. Medd. Dansk Naturhist. Foren., 125: 14, provided records for Nigeria. Emms, Jambang, Bah, Mankali, Rödel, and Barnett, 2005, Herpetol. Bull., London, 94: 6-16, provided records for Gambia.

External Links

Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.

• For additional sources of information from other sites search Google
• For images search Arkive, CalPhoto Images and Google Images
• To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
• For information aggregation from other sites and some original accounts see AmphibiaWeb report
• For further information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
• For related information on conservation and images as well as observation see iNaturalist;
• for a quick link to their maps see iNaturalist KML