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

Sclerophrys tihamica (Balletto and Cherchi, 1973)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Bufonidae > Genus: Sclerophrys > Species: Sclerophrys tihamica

Bufo pentoni tihamicus Balletto and Cherchi, 1973, Boll. Mus. Ist. Biol. Univ. Genova, 41: 114. Holotype: IZUG 2, by original designation. Type locality: "Sokna (Yemen)", 14° 48′ N, 43° 26′ E, 350 m elevation.

Bufo tihamicus — Balletto, Cherchi, and Gasperetti, 1985, Fauna Saudi Arabia, 7: 328.

"Bufo" tihamicus — 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: 363. Excluded from Bufo and unassigned to genus.

Amietophrynus tihamicus — Portik and Papenfuss, 2015, BMC Evol. Biol., 15 (152): 1.

Sclerophrys tihamica — Ohler and Dubois, 2016, PeerJ, 4(e1553): 9.

Common Names

Balletto's Toad (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 43).

Distribution

Southern Hadramaut of the Arabian Peninsula, from south of Mecca (Saudi Arabia) to region of Aden (southern Yemen).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Comment

Records of Bufo pentoni from the Arabian Peninsula apply to this closely related species. See account by Balletto, Cherchi, and Gasperetti, 1985, Fauna Saudi Arabia, 7: 328-335. See comments by Schätti and Desvoignes, 1999, Herpetofauna S. Yemen and Sokotra: 33. 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, suggested that this species is not a member of the monophyletic taxon Bufo (the former Bufo bufo group), but could not allocate this species to any of the other genera either, instead leaving this species in a non-taxon "Bufo". Al-Qahtani and Al-Johany, 2018, Saudi J. Biol. Sci., 25: 1380–1386, discussed and mapped this species in southwestern Saudi Arabia. Hamdi and Fathy, 2021, Egypt. Acad. J. Biol. Sci. B. Zool., 13: 23–32, discussed presence and abundance in the Jizan region of extreme southwestern Saudi Arabia. Al-Johany, Al-Qahtani, Al-Qarni, and Al-Osaimi, 2025, In Heatwole, Das, and King (eds.), Amphibian Biology. Volume 11, Part 8 (Status of Conservation and Decline of Amphibians: Eastern Hemisphere): 235–249, discussed habitat and conservation and provided photographs and polygon range maps for Saudi Arabia. Böhme and Koppetsch, 2025, In Heatwole, Das, and King (eds.), Amphibian Biology. Volume 11, Part 8 (Status of Conservation and Decline of Amphibians: Eastern Hemisphere): 279–294, reported on natural history, systematics, distribution, advertisement call, and conservation in Yemen.

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