Rhinella marina (Linnaeus, 1758)

Common Names

Marine Toad (Shaw, 1802, Gen. Zool., 3(1): 155; Griffith in Cuvier, 1831, Animal Kingdom (Griffith), 9: 401; Wright and Wright, 1933, Handb. Frogs Toads U.S. Canada: x; Goris and Maeda, 2004, Guide Amph. Rept. Japan: 52)

Shoulder-knot Frog (Lacépède, 1802, Nat. Hist. Ovip. Quadruped. (Kerr transl.): 240).

Agua Toad (Wood, 1863, Illust. Nat. Hist., 3: 168).

Giant Toad (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 42, in the sense of Rhinella marina, as including Rhinella horribilis).

Cane Toad (Cogger, 1975, Rept. Amph. Australia, Ed. 2: 114 [in the sense of being applied to Rhinella marina]).

South American Cane Toad (Hedges, Powell, Henderson, Hanson, and Murphy, 2019, Caribb. Herpetol., 67: 9). 

Distribution

East of the Andes throughout Amazonian and Guianan South America (the Guianas to central Brazil, and Amazonian Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia); introduced widely worldwide (Antilles, Hawaii, Guam, Fiji, Philippines, Taiwan, Ryukyu Is. (Japan), New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Australia [northern Western Australia, east and south to extreme northeastern New South Wales], and many Pacific islands).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela

Introduced: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Barbados, Bermuda, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Haiti, Indonesia, Indonesia - Papua Region, Jamaica, Japan, Martinique, Mauritius, Montserrat, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Taiwan, United States of America, United States of America - Florida, United States of America - Hawaii, Virgin Islands, British, Virgin Islands, U.S.

Comment

In the Bufo marinus group of Martin, 1972, in Blair (ed.), Evol. Genus Bufo: 57. Duellman, 1978, Misc. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 65: 117–118, provided a brief account and characterization of the call and tadpole. Easteal, 1981, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 16: 93–113, discussed the history of introductions. Reviewed by Easteal, 1986, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 395: 1–2, in the sense of including Rhinella horribilis. See comment under Rhinella poeppigii. Lescure and Marty, 2000, Collect. Patrimoines Nat., Paris, 45: 68–69, provided a brief account and photo.Slade and Moritz, 1998, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. B, Biol. Sci., 265: 769–777, reported on mtDNA phylogeography and noted a large genetic break between populations on either side of the Venezuelan Andes, with Bufo paracnemis (= Rhinella schneideri of this catalog) being nested within the eastern lineage. The western lineage has subsequently been recognized as Rhinella horribilis, but the analytic paraphyly of nominal Rhinella marina remains problematic. Kenny, 1969, Stud. Fauna Curaçao and other Caribb. Is., 29: 59–61, and Murphy, 1997, Amph. Rept. Trinidad Tobago: 59–60, provided accounts for Trinidad. Rodríguez and Duellman, 1994, Univ. Kansas Mus. Nat. Hist. Spec. Publ., 22: 14, provided a brief account. Lever, 2003, Naturalized Rept. Amph. World: 147–175, discussed introduced populations. Goris and Maeda, 2004, Guide Amph. Rept. Japan: 52–54, provided an account for introduced Japanese populations. Paice, 2005, Herpetol. Rev., 36: 331–332, provided a record for Mustique Island in the Grenadines, Lesser Antilles. Duellman, 2005, Cusco Amazonico: 184–189, provided an account (adult and larval morphology, description of the call, life history). Almendáriz C. and Orcés, 2004, Rev. Politécnica, Quito, 25: 108, provided distributional data for Ecuador, in the sense of including Rhinella horribilis as part of Rhinella marina. Kwet, Di-Bernardo, and Maneyro, 2006, Iheringia, Zool., 96: 479–485, provided a key to distinguish this species from other members of the Rhinella marina group. Daudin and de Silva, 2007, Appl. Herpetol., 4: 163–175, reported on island distribution in the Grenadines, Lesser Antilles. Lorvelec, Pascal, Pavis, and Feldmann, 2007, Appl. Herpetol., 4: 131–161, discussed the original range and introductions within the French West Indies. Kok and Kalamandeen, 2008, Intr. Taxon. Amph. Kaieteur Natl. Park: 132–133, provided an account.  Vallinoto, Sequeira, Sodré, Bernardi, Sampaio, and Schneider, 2010, Zool. Scripta, 39: 128–140, provided molecular evidence that the Amazonian population of Rhinella marina (which carried the name when the nominal species was partitioned) is most closely related to other members of the Rhinella marina complex, but distant from two clades, one in Central America (and presumably including populations extending north into Mexico as well), and another in western Ecuador. The name Bufo horribilis Wiegmann may be available for the Central American clade, while the western Ecuadorian population apparently lacks a name (DRF). The Mexico to western Ecuador populations have subsequently been segregated as Rhinella horribilis. Maciel, Collevatti, Colli, and Schwartz, 2010, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 57: 787–797, also reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the Rhinella marina group, including this species in the sense of including Rhinella horribilis. Ugueto and Rivas-Fuenmayor, 2010, Amph. Rep. Margarita Coche Cubagua: 69–71, provided an account for the population on the Venezuelan island of Margarita. Sequeira, Sodré, Ferrand de Almeida, Bernardi, Sampaio, Schneider, and Vallinoto, 2011, BMC Evol. Biol., 11(264): 1–15, reported on unidirectional hybridization with Rhinella schneideri. Bernarde, Machado, and Turci, 2011, Biota Neotrop., 11: 117–144, reported specimens from Reserva Extrativista Riozinho da Liberdade, Acre, Brazil. See account for Suriname population by Ouboter and Jairam, 2012, Amph. Suriname: 66–69. See Cole, Townsend, Reynolds, MacCulloch, and Lathrop, 2013, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 125: 379, for brief account and records for Guyana. Henderson and Powell, 2009, Nat. Hist. Rept. Amph. W. Indies: 30–31, summarized the natural history literature for the Antilles (as Bufo marinus). França and Venâncio, 2010, Biotemas, 23: 71–84, provided a record for the municipality of Boca do Acre, Amazonas, with a brief discussion of the range. Arteaga-Navarro, Bustamante, and Guayasamin, 2013, Amph. Rept. Mindo: 35–38, provided an account and map for Ecuador. Zimmerman, 1983, Herpetologica, 39: 235–246, reported on advertisement call. Señaris, Lampo, Rojas-Runjaic, and Barrio-Amorós, 2014, Guía Ilust. Anf. Parque Nac. Canaima: 68–69, provided a brief account for the Parque Nacional de Canaima, Venezuela, and photograph. See observations in Philippines by Sanguila, Cobb, Siler, Diesmos, Alcala, and Brown, 2016, ZooKeys, 624: 15–17. For identification of larvae (as Bufo marinus) in central Amazonia, Brazil, see Hero, 1990, Amazoniana, 11: 201–262. Metcalf, Marsh, Torres Pacaya, Graham, and Gunnels, 2020, Herpetol. Notes, 13: 753–767, reported the species from the Santa Cruz Forest Reserve, Loreto, northeastern Peru. Bessa-Silva, Vallinoto, Sampaio, Flores-Villela, Smith, and Sequeira, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 145 (106723): 1–12, discussed the phylogenetic relationship and biogeography of this species and its sister Rhinella horribilis. Señaris and Rojas-Runjaic, 2020, in Rull and Carnaval (eds.), Neotrop. Divers. Patterns Process.: 571–632, commented on range and conservation status in the Venezuelan Guayana. See brief account for the Manu region, Peru, by Villacampa-Ortega, Serrano-Rojas, and Whitworth, 2017, Amph. Manu Learning Cent.: 40–41. Navarro-Salcedo, Navarro-Morales, and Vargas-Salinas, 2020, Catal. Anf. Rept. Colombia, Medellín, 6: 63–72, provided a detailed literature review and account, including photograph, map for Colombia, and natural history. In the Rhinella marina clade, Rhinella marina group of Pereyra, Blotto, Baldo, Chaparro, Ron, Elias-Costa, Iglesias, Venegas, Thomé, Ospina-Sarria, Maciel, Rada, Kolenc, Borteiro, Rivera-Correa, Rojas-Runjaic, Moravec, De la Riva, Wheeler, Castroviejo-Fisher, Grant, Haddad, and Faivovich, 2021, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 447: 1–156. See comments by Baron, Marin, Logramonte, and Mohagan, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 76–87. Rivera, Prates, Firneno, Rodrigues, Caldwell, and Fujita, 2022 "2021", Mol. Ecol., 31: 978–992, reported on phylogenetics and noted that that the members of the Rhinella marina–Rhinella jimi–Rhinella horribilis clade exchanged genes throughout much of their biogeographic history. Cutajar, Portway, Gillard, and Rowley, 2022, Tech. Rep. Aust. Mus. Online, 36: 42, provided a polygon distribution map for Australia. Taucce, Costa-Campos, Carvalho, and Michalski, 2022, Eur. J. Taxon., 836: 96–130, reported on distribution, literature, and conservation status for Amapá, Brazil. Schiesari, Rossa-Feres, Menin, and Hödl, 2022, Zootaxa, 5223: 31–32, detailed larval and metamorph morphology and natural history. Mittan-Moreau, Kelehear, Toledo, Bacon, Guayasamin, Snyder, and Zamudio, 2022, Mol. Ecol., 31: 6440–6456, discussed the molecular evidence for patterns of introduction worldwide and the difficulties in identifying source populations in Florida, USA. Crnobrna, Santa-Cruz Farfan, Gallegos, López-Rojas, Llanqui, Panduro Pisco, and Kelsen Arbaiza, 2023, Check List, 19: 441, provided a record from Ucayali Department, central-eastern Peru. Venturina, Diesmos, Maglangit, del Prado, Ordas, Fernandez, Dans, Warguez, and Diesmos, 2023, Philipp. J. Sci., 152: 2031–2048, reported on the presence in central Mindanao, Philippines. Ríos-López, 2023, In Rios-Lopez and Heatwole (eds.), Conserv. Biogeograph. Amph. Caribb.: 242, discussed introduction into Haiti. Introduced population in Florida, USA, discussed and mapped to county by Meshaka, Collins, Bury, and McCallum, 2022, Exotic Amph. Rept. USA: 33–35. Silva, Sousa, Vallinoto, Costa, Furo, Gomes, and Oliveira, 2024, PLoS One, 19(8: e0308785): 1–15, compared the cytogenetics of Rhinella margaritifera, Rhinella, granulosa, and Rhinella marina, using several techniques.

      

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• For additional information specific to Ecuador see FaunaWebEcuador: Anfibios del Ecuador
• For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.