Arthroleptis sylvaticus (Laurent, 1954)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Arthroleptidae > Subfamily: Arthroleptinae > Genus: Arthroleptis > Species: Arthroleptis sylvaticus

Schoutedenella sylvatica Laurent, 1954, Ann. Mus. R. Congo Belge, Tervuren, Ser. Quarto, Sci. Zool., 1: 38. Holotype: MRAC unnumbered, according to the original publication. Type locality: "Buta", Uele, Dem. Rep. Congo.

Arthroleptis sylvatica — Laurent, 1957, Rev. Zool. Bot. Afr., 56: 274–275, by implication; Gorham, 1974, Checklist World Amph.: 129; 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: 336.

Schoutedenella sylvatica — Laurent, 1985, in Frost (ed.), Amph. Species World: 20; Laurent and Fabrezi, 1986 "1985", Alytes, 4: 92.

Common Names

Forest Screeching Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 37).

Forest Squeaker (Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 256).

Distribution

Rainforest from southwestern Cameroon and Gabon through Rep. Congo to northwestern Angola, north-central Central Africa Republic, and northeastern Dem. Rep. Congo, sea level to about 1300 m elevation; presumably to be found in Equatorial Guinea and southeastern Nigeria.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Gabon

Likely/Controversially Present: Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria

Comment

See brief account in Laurent, 1972, Explor. Parc Natl. Virunga, Ser. 2, 22: 31–32. Considered a synonym of Arthroleptis xenodactylus by Loveridge, 1957, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., 117: 351. Frétey and Blanc, 2002 "2001", Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 126: 381, reported this species from Gabon. Frétey, 2008, Alytes, 25: 99–172, summarized the literature. Jacobsen, 2009, Afr. Herp News, 47: 2–20, reported this species from east-north-central Central African Republic. See brief comments regarding range and habitat in Gabon by Larson and Zimkus, 2018, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 13: 244, and Jongsma, Tobi, Dixon-MacCallum, Bamba-Kaya, Yoga, Mbega, Mve Beh, Emrich, and Blackburn, 2017, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 11 (1: e144): 6, who noted that the nominal species is a species complex. Nagy, Chifundera, Collet, and Gvoždík, 2013, Herpetol. Notes, 6:  413–419, provided a record from Bas-Congo, southwestern Dem. Rep. Congo. Dewynter, Chirio, Melki, Cordier, and Frétey, 2017, Cah. Fondation Biotope, 11: 6, provided a brief account and photographs of Arthroleptis cf. sylvaticus from the Mount Koumouna-Bouali area of Gabon. Dewynter, Frétey, Jongsma, Bamba-Kaya, and Pauwels, 2018, Cah. Fondation Biotope, 18: 20, provided a brief account and photographs from the Monts Birougou area of Gabon. Dewynter and Frétey, 2019, Cah. Fondation Biotope, 27: 7, reviewed the literature of the species in Gabon, provided a photograph (p. 44), and mentioned that the species is composed of at least three cryptic lineages (previously identified by Deichmann, Mulcahy, Vanthomme, Tobi, Wynn, Zimkus, and McDiarmid, 2017, PLoS One, 12 (11: e0187283): 1–38, and Larson and Zimkus, 2018, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 13: 244), recognized this as a species complex with the lineages not (readily) identifiable by morphology. Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 256–257, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. See brief account and photograph for Equatorial Guinea by Sánchez-Vialas, Calvo-Revuelta, Castroviejo-Fisher, and De la Riva, 2020, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 66: 147. Ernst, Lautenschläger, Branquima, and Hölting, 2020, Zoosyst. Evol., 96: 248, noted the species to occur in Uigé Province of northwestern Angola.  

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