Boana punctata (Schneider, 1799)

Common Names

Polka-dot Treefrog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 57).

Dotted Treefrog (Hedges, Powell, Henderson, Hanson, and Murphy, 2019, Caribb. Herpetol., 67: 13).

Distribution

Seasonally flooded forest of the Amazon Basin of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil and the Orinoco Basin; central Brazil; Paraguay, and Argentina; Guianas and Amapá (Brazil), northern Colombia in the Sierra Santa Marta, and the open lowlands of Venezuela (Amazonas, Apure, Bolívar, and Sucre) and Trinidad, except for the Maracaibo Lake Basin.

Geographic Occurrence

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

Comment

Hyla punctata rubrolineata Lutz, 1951, was considered by Cei, 1980, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Monogr., 2: 482–484, to be a distinct species.  Duellman, 1978, Misc. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 65: 158–159, provided a brief account including characterization of call and tadpole.See Hoogmoed and Gruber, 1983, Spixiana, München, Suppl., 9: 365, for discussion. Lescure and Marty, 2000, Collect. Patrimoines Nat., Paris, 45: 136–137, provided a brief account and photo. Kenny, 1969, Stud. Fauna Curaçao and other Caribb. Is., 29: 40–42, and Murphy, 1997, Amph. Rept. Trinidad Tobago: 72–73, provided accounts for the Trinidad and Tobago populations. Márquez, De la Riva, and Bosch, 1993, Biotropica, 25: 426–443, described the advertisement call. Chacón-Ortiz and Diaz de Pascual, 2002, Herpetol. Rev., 33: 145, provided localities for Venezuela. See comments regarding distribution of Venezuelan population by Gorzula and Señaris Vasquez, 1999 "1998", Scient. Guaianae, 8: 35. Barrio-Amorós, 1999 "1998", Acta Biol. Venezuelica, 18: 33, commented on the range in Venezuela. Camargo-Siliet, Rivero, and La Marca, 2004, Herpetol. Rev., 35: 282, commented on the range in Venezuela. Duellman, 2005, Cusco Amazonico: 222–223, provided an account (adult and larval morphology, description of the call, life history). In the Hypsiboas punctatus group of Faivovich, Haddad, Garcia, Frost, Campbell, and Wheeler, 2005, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 294: 88. Napoli and Cruz, 2005, Arq. Mus. Nac., Rio de Janeiro, 63: 283–288, discussed evidence from calls that suggests that Hyla punctata rubrolineata may be a distinct species, Hypsiboas rubrolineata. Brusquetti and Lavilla, 2006, Cuad. Herpetol., 20: 9–10, briefly discused the range in Paraguay. See account for Surinam population by Ouboter and Jairam, 2012, Amph. Suriname: 158–159. Kolenc, Borteiro, Alcalde, Baldo, Cardozo, and Faivovich, 2008, Zootaxa, 1927: 1–66, reported on larval morphology (as Hypsiboas punctatus rubrolineatus). 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. Lynch and Suárez-Mayorga, 2011, Caldasia, 33: 235–270, illustrated the tadpole and included the species in a key to the tadpoles of Amazonian Colombia. See Cole, Townsend, Reynolds, MacCulloch, and Lathrop, 2013, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 125: 407, for brief account and records for Guyana. Weiler, Núñez, Airaldi, Lavilla, Peris, and Baldo, 2013, Anf. Paraguay: 66, provided a brief account, image, and dot map for Paraguay. Brunetti, Taboada, and Faivovich, 2015, J. Herpetol., 49: 46–52, reported on the extended vocal repertoire. Fouquet, Vacher, Kadosoe, Jairam, and Ouboter, 2015, Herpetol. Notes, 8: 63–68, reported the species from the Sipaliwini Nature Reserve, southern Surinam. Schulze, Jansen, and Köhler, 2015, Zootaxa, 4016: 38–39, described, diagnosed, and pictured the larva of their Dendropsophus punctatus A from Bolivia, which they suggested is not conspecific with populations from French Guiana. Guarnizo, Paz, Muñoz-Ortiz, Flechas-Hernández, Méndez-Narváez, and Crawford, 2016, PLoS One, 10(5: e0127312): 1–20, suggested on the basis of molecular evidence that two species likely exist in Colombia under this binomial. Acosta-Galvis, 2017, Biota Colomb., 18: 282–315, reported the species from the Municipality of Yopal, Casanare Department, Colombia. Taboada, Brunetti, Alexandre, Lagorio, and Faivovich, 2017, S. Am. J. Herpetol., 12: 1–13, discussed fluorescence of this species under UV-A/blue light. Zimmerman, 1983, Herpetologica, 39: 235–246, reported on advertisement call, as Hyla punctata. Señaris Vasquez, Lampo, Rojas-Runjaic, and Barrio-Amorós, 2014, Guía Ilust. Anf. Parque Nac. Canaima: 162–163, provided a photograph and a brief account for the Parque Nacional de Canaima, Venezuela. Lima, Dubeux, Nascimento, Bruschi, and Mott, 2019, Amphibia-Reptilia, 40: 511–521, suggested that Boana punctata is a species complex. 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. Señaris Vasquez 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. Vaz-Silva, Maciel, Nomura, Morais, Guerra Batista, Santos, Andrade, Oliveira, Brandão, and Bastos, 2020, Guia Ident. Anf. Goiás e Dist. Fed. Brasil Central: 51–52, provided an account. See brief account for the Manu region, Peru, by Villacampa-Ortega, Serrano-Rojas, and Whitworth, 2017, Amph. Manu Learning Cent.: 170–171 (as Hypsiboas punctatus). 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: 47–48, detailed larval and metamorph morphology and natural history. Gagliardi-Urrutia, García Dávila, Jaramillo-Martinez, Rojas-Padilla, Rios-Alva, Aguilar-Manihuari, Pérez-Peña, Castroviejo-Fisher, Simões, Estivals, Guillen Huaman, Castro Ruiz, Angulo Chávez, Mariac, Duponchelle, and Renno, 2022, Anf. Loreto: 94–95, provided a brief account, photograph, dot map, and genetic barcode for Loreto, Peru. Crnobrna, Santa-Cruz Farfan, Gallegos, López-Rojas, Llanqui, Panduro Pisco, and Kelsen Arbaiza, 2023, Check List, 19: 443, provided a record from Ucayali Department, central-eastern Peru.  

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• 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 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.