Teratohyla spinosa (Taylor, 1949)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Centrolenidae > Subfamily: Centroleninae > Genus: Teratohyla > Species: Teratohyla spinosa

Centrolenella spinosa Taylor, 1949, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 33: 259. Holotype: KU 23809, by original designation. Type locality: "Los Diamantes, one mile south of Guápiles, [Cantón de Pococí, Provincia Limón,] Costa Rica". Savage, 1974, Rev. Biol. Tropical, 22: 90, commented on the type locality.

Teratohyla spinosa — Taylor, 1951, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 64: 35.

Centrolenella spinosa — Savage, 1967, Copeia, 1967: 328.

Cochranella spinosa — Ruiz-Carranza and Lynch, 1991, Lozania, 57: 23.

Teratohyla spinosa — Guayasamin, Castroviejo-Fisher, Trueb, Ayarzagüena, Rada, and Vilà, 2009, Zootaxa, 2100: 37.

Common Names

Spiny Cochran Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 47).

Dwarf Glassfrog (Guayasamin, Cisneros-Heredia, McDiarmid, Peña, and Hutter, 2020, Diversity, 12 (222): 241; Coloma and Duellman, 2025, Amph. Ecuador. Vol. 4: xxx). 

Rana de Cristal Enana (Spanish: Coloma and Duellman, 2025, Amph. Ecuador. Vol. 4: xxx).

Distribution

Caribbean slopes of northeastern Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica; Pacific slopes from Costa Rica, along the lowlands through western Colombia to the northern and central Pacific lowlands of Ecuador (Esmeraldas, Pichincha, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, and Los Ríos provinces), below 700 m elevation.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama

Comment

In the Cochranella ocellata group, according to Ruiz-Carranza and Lynch, 1991, Lozania, 57: 1–30; in the Cochranella spinosa group of Ruiz-Carranza and Lynch, 1995, Lozania, 62: 1–23. Lips and Savage, 1996, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 109: 17–26, included this species (as Cochranella spinosa) in a key to the tadpoles found in Costa Rica. See account by Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 772. See accounts by Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 365–367, and McCranie and Wilson, 2002, Amph. Honduras: 213–215. Cisneros-Heredia and McDiarmid, 2005, Check List, 1(1): 20, provided discussed the range and provided new Ecuadorian localities. McCranie, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 37, detailed the departmental distribution in Honduras. Cisneros-Heredia and McDiarmid, 2007, Zootaxa, 1572: 64, discussed the species in Ecuador and noted the relevant literature. Kubicki, 2007, Glass Frogs Costa Rica: 154–167, provided an account and detailed range map for Costa Rica. Cisneros-Heredia, 2009, Check List, 5: 912–916, discussed the range. See comments by Sunyer, Páiz, Dehling, and Köhler, 2009, Herpetol. Notes, 2: 189–202, regarding Nicaraguan populations. Travers, Townsend, Sunyer, Obando, Wilson, and Nickerson, 2011, Herpetol. Rev., 42: 399, noted a new locality in Nicaragua (Atlántico Norte). Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 117–127, compared the centrolenid species of Central America and provided an identification key, maps, and photographs. Guayasamin, Cisneros-Heredia, McDiarmid, Peña, and Hutter, 2020, Diversity, 12 (222): 241–244, provided a detailed account, including adult and larval morphology, advertisement call, relationships, natural history, and conservation status. J. M. Guayasamin, L. A. Coloma, and A. Terán-Valdez in Coloma and Duellman, 2025, Amph. Ecuador. Vol. 4: 318–320, provided an account, with photographs, which summarized identification, adult and larval morphology, systematics, natural history, distribution (including a dot map for Ecuador), conservation, and (on pp. 415–416) vocalization.

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