Conraua Nieden, 1908

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Conrauidae > Genus: Conraua
8 species

Conraua Nieden, 1908, Mitt. Zool. Mus. Berlin, 3: 497. Type species: Conraua robusta Nieden, 1908, by monotypy.

Pseudoxenopus Barbour and Loveridge, 1927, Proc. New England Zool. Club, 10: 14. Type species: Pseudoxenopus alleni Barbour and Loveridge, 1927, by monotypy. Synonymy (with Rana) by Barbour and Loveridge, 1930, in Strong (ed.), Afr. Rep. Liberia Belgian Congo, 2: 778; Parker, 1931, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 10, 7: 493; (with Conraua) by Parker, 1936, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1936: 137.

Paleorana Scortecci, 1931, Atti Soc. Ital. Sci. Nat. Mus. Civ. Stor. Nat. Milano, 70: 17. Type species: Rana beccarii Boulenger, 1911, by subsequent designation of Parker, 1936, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1936: 137. Synonymy by Parker, 1936, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1936: 137.

Gigantorana Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 340. Type species: Rana goliath Boulenger, 1906, by monotypy. Synonymy with Conraua by Parker, 1936, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1936: 137.

Hydrobatrachus Stadie, 1962, Zool. Anz., 169: 315, 329. Type species: Rana beccarii Boulenger, 1911, by original designation. Synonymy by Mertens, 1963, Senckenb. Biol., 44: 175-176.

English Names

Slippery Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 98).

Giant Frogs (Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 246).

Distribution

Tropical West Africa, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Comment

Revised by Lamotte and Perret, 1968, Bull. Inst. Fondam. Afr. Noire, Ser. A, 30: 1603-1644. Considered the sister-taxon of at least the tigerina and occipitalis sections of the subgenus Euphlyctis (of Rana) by Clarke, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 285-331. Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 136, placed Conraua as the sister taxon of remaining Petropedetidae. Bossuyt, Brown, Hillis, Cannatella, and Milinkovitch, 2006, Syst. Biol., 55: 579-594, corroborated this result with the exception of excluding Indirana from Petropedetidae. Channing, Rödel, and Channing, 2012, Tadpoles of Africa: 257–264, provided information on comparative larval morphology. Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 346–351, provided brief accounts, photographs, and range maps for the species. Blackburn, Nielsen, Barej, Doumbia, Hirschfeld, Kouamé, Lawson, Loader, Ofori-Boateng, Stanley, and Rödel, 2020, Zool. Scripta, 49: 684–696, provided a molecular phylogeny and discussed cryptic diversity within the genus. 

Contained taxa (8 sp.):

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