Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Craugastor bransfordii (Cope, 1886)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Brachycephaloidea > Family: Craugastoridae > Genus: Craugastor > Species: Craugastor bransfordii

Lithodytes bransfordii Cope, 1886, Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., 23: 274. Syntypes: USNM 14179 (10 specimens) (given as 14200 in the original publication and by Cochran, 1961, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 220: 65); lectotype, renumbered USNM 166895, designated by Savage and Emerson, 1970, Copeia, 1970: 636. Type locality: "Nicaragua".

Hylodes bransfordii — Günther, 1901, Biol. Centr. Amer., Rept. Batr., Vol. 7, Part 162: 238.

Eleutherodactylus bransfordii — Stejneger, 1904, Annu. Rep. U.S. Natl. Mus. for 1902: 582–583, by implication; Noble, 1918, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 38: 332; Barbour and Dunn, 1921, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 34: 161.

Microbatrachylus bransfordii — Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 675.

Microbatrachylus rearki Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 678. Holotype: KU 31533, by original designation. Type locality: "Bataan [= Batan, Cantón de Matin, Provincia de Limón], Costa Rica". Type locality commented on by Savage, 1974, Rev. Biol. Tropical, 22: 78. Synonymy by Savage and Emerson, 1970, Copeia, 1970: 623–644.

Microbatrachylus costaricensis Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 682. Holotype: R.C. Taylor 372, by original designation; now FMNH 178240 according to Marx, 1976, Fieldiana, Zool., 69: 58. Type locality: "Morehouse Finca, approximately four miles south of Turrialba, [Cantón de Turrialba, Provincia de Cartago,] Costa Rica". Savage, 1974, Rev. Biol. Tropical, 22: 98, commented on the type locality. Synonymy by Savage and Emerson, 1970, Copeia, 1970: 623–644.

Eleutherodactylus bransfordii — Lynch, 1965, Nat. Hist. Misc., 182: 7.

Eleutherodactylus costaricensis — Lynch, 1965, Nat. Hist. Misc., 182: 7.

Eleutherodactylus rearki — Lynch, 1965, Nat. Hist. Misc., 182: 7.

Eleutherodactylus (Craugastor) bransfordii — Hedges, 1989, in Woods (ed.), Biogeograph. W. Indies: 317, by implication; Lynch, 1996, in Powell and Henderson (eds.), Contr. W. Indian Herpetol.: 154.

Craugastor bransfordii — Crawford and Smith, 2005, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 35: 551, by implication; 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: 360.

Craugastor (Craugastor) bransfordii — Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 41.

Common Names

Bransford's Robber Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 73).

Bransford's Flesh-bellied Frog (Cossel, Twining, Di Stefano, O’Brien, Reich, and Sandoval-Alanis, 2019, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 14: 236).

Distribution

Humid lowlands and adjacent premontane slopes on the Atlantic versant from extreme eastern Honduras and eastern Nicaragua to central Costa Rica, 60–880 m elevation. (See comment.)

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua

Comment

Reviewed by Savage and Emerson, 1970, Copeia, 1970: 623-644, who placed this species in the Eleutherodactylus rhodopis group. Miyamoto, 1983, Syst. Zool., 32: 43–51, studied biochemical variation, removed Eleutherodactylus stejnegerianus from synonymy and noted that the remaining nominal species, Eleutherodactylus bransfordii, was composed of two cryptic species. In the Eleutherodactylus (Craugastor) rhodopis group according to Lynch and Duellman, 1997, Univ. Kansas Mus. Nat. Hist. Spec. Publ., 23: 221. See account by Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 257-258, who included this species in his Eleutherodactylus rhodopis series, Eleutherodactylus rhodopis group, and noted (p. 257) that a number of species exist under this name, awaiting description or resurrection. See comment under Eleutherodactylus persimilis. In the Craugastor rhodopis species series, Craugastor podiciferus species group of Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 41, and of Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 123. See comments by Sunyer, Páiz, Dehling, and Köhler, 2009, Herpetol. Notes, 2: 189–202, regarding Nicaraguan populations. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 140–191, provided a key to the genera and species of Brachycephaloidea (= Craugastoridae, Eleutherodactylidae) in Central America and provided maps and photographs of the species, including this one. Cossel, Twining, Di Stefano, O’Brien, Reich, and Sandoval-Alanis, 2019, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 14: 235–249, mapped the species in Costa Rica. See comment under Craugastor polyptychus. Martínez-Fonseca, Holmes, Sunyer, Westeen, Grundler, Cerda, Fernández-Mena, Loza-Molina, Monagan, Nondorf, Pandelis, and Rabosky, 2024, Check List, 20: 65, provided a record from Refugio Bartola, Departamento Río San Juan, southern Nicaragua.

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 access to general information see Wikipedia
For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
For information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
For information on distribution, habitat, and conservation see the Map of Life
For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.