Craugastor megacephalus (Cope, 1875)

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

Lithodytes megacephalus Cope, 1875 "1876", J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, Ser. 2, 8: 110. Holotype: USNM 32579 according to Cochran, 1961, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 220: 66. Type locality: "Pico Blanco, 6000 feet elevation", Costa Rica. Corrected to "Cerro Utyum, 6000 ft, Cantón de Talamanca, Provincia de Limón; 2134 m", Costa Rica, by Savage, 1974, Rev. Biol. Tropical, 22: 110. See discussion of type locality by Arias and Chaves, 2014, Mesoam. Herpetol., 1: 176–180, who concluded that the type locality is actually ""Near an unnamed hill close to the Río Lari canyon, elev. 1,830 m", Provincia de Limón, Costa Rica.

Hylodes megacephalus — Brocchi, 1882, Miss. Scient. Mex. Amer. Centr., Rech. Zool., 3(2, livr. 2): 57.

Eleutherodactylus megacephalus — Stejneger, 1904, Annu. Rep. U.S. Natl. Mus. for 1902: 582-583, by implication; Savage and Myers, 2002, Am. Mus. Novit., 3357: 29.

Craugastor megacephalus — 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) megacephalus — Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 38.

Common Names

None noted.

Distribution

Lowlands and premontane slopes on the Atlantic versant from southwestern Honduras to central Panama, where it also occurs in uplands on the Pacific versant, from near sea level to 1200 m elevation.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama

Comment

Removed from the synonymy of Strabomantis biporcatus by Savage and Myers, 2002, Am. Mus. Novit., 3357: 29, where it had been placed by Lynch, 1975, Occas. Pap. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 38: 1–46. Previously it had been placed in the synonymy of Hylodes rugosus Peters, 1874, by Noble, 1918, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 38: 329. See account by Savage and Myers, 2002, Am. Mus. Novit., 3357:29–34. See account by Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 254–255, who included this species in his Eleutherodactylus fitzingeri series, Eleutherodactylus biporcatus group. McCranie and Wilson, 2002, Amph. Honduras: 356–361, provded an account, written prior to the revision of Savage and Myers of "Eleutherodactylus biporcatus" which likely applies to this species. McCranie, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 37, summarized the departmental distribution in Honduras. In the Craugastor gulosus species series of Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 38. In the Craugastor (Craugastor) punctariolus species series 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. Salazar, Montes-Correa, and Barrio-Amorós, 2021, Anartia, Zulia, 32: 67–70, reported on the advertisement call. Martínez-Fonseca, Holmes, Sunyer, Westeen, Grundler, Cerda, Fernández-Mena, Loza-Molina, Monagan, Nondorf, Pandelis, and Rabosky, 2024, Check List, 20: 67, provided a record from Refugio Bartola, Departamento Río San Juan, Nicaragua, 60 m elevation. 

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