Afrixalus equatorialis (Laurent, 1941)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Hyperoliidae > Subfamily: Hyperoliinae > Genus: Afrixalus > Species: Afrixalus equatorialis

Megalixalus equatorialis Laurent, 1941, Rev. Zool. Bot. Afr., 35: 122. Holotype: MRAC 36169, by original designation. Type locality: "Flandria (distr. Tshuapa)", Dem. Rep. Congo.

Megalixalus fornasinii equatorialisLaurent, 1946, Bull. Mus. R. Hist. Nat. Belg., 22: 1–16.

Afrixalus equatorialisGuibé, 1948, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 2, 20: 500, by implication.

English Names

Zaire Banana Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 65).

Congo Spiny Reed Frog (Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 160).

Distribution

Lowland rainforests of southeastern Cameroon to central Dem. Rep. Congo; expected in southwestern Central African Republic and intervening Equatorial Guinea and Rep. Congo.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the

Likely/Controversially Present: Central African Republic, Congo, Republic of the, Equatorial Guinea

Comment

Sympatric with Afrixalus osorioi in central Dem. Rep. Congo, according to Schiøtz, 1982, Steenstrupia, 8: 261, and Laurent, 1982, Ann. Mus. R. Afr. Cent., Tervuren, Ser. Octavo, Sci. Zool., 235: 18. Schiøtz, 1999, Treefrogs Afr.: 53–54, provided a brief account and map and suggested that Afrixalus equatorialis and Afrixalus nigeriensis might ultimately be found to be conspecific. Amiet, 2009, Rev. Suisse Zool., 116: 68–69, provided the record for Cameroon. Penner and Rödel, 2007, in Butynski and McCullough (eds.), RAP Bull. Biol. Assessment, 46: 37-41, provided a record for north-central Dem. Rep. Congo. See account for Cameroon by Amiet, 2009, Rev. Suisse Zool., 116: 53–92. See account for Cameroon by Amiet, 2012, Rainettes Cameroun: 89–92. Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 160–161, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map, which included southwestern Central African Republic and Rep. Congo in the distributional polygon. Sánchez-Vialas, Calvo-Revuelta, Castroviejo-Fisher, and De la Riva, 2020, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 66: 146, considered the species to be a possible member of the Equatorial Guinea fauna. Kako-Wanzalire, Mongo, Ilonga, Mapoli, Mbumba, Neema, Tungaluna, Itoka, and Bogaert, 2021, Tropicultura, 39 (1: 1709): 1–19, discussed habitat preference in Tshopo, north-central Dem. Rep. Congo. Badjedjea, Masudi, Akaibe, and Gvoždík, 2022, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 16 (1: e301): 49, commented on a population from the Kokolopori Bonobo Nature Reserve, Tshuapa Province, Dem. Rep. Congo. 

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