Osteopilus septentrionalis (Duméril and Bibron, 1841)

Common Names

Marbled Tree-toad (Trachycephalus marmoratus [no longer recognized]: Wood, 1863, Illust. Nat. Hist., 3: 172).

Giant Tree-frog (Carr, 1940, Univ. Florida Biol. Sci. Ser., 3: 62).

Cuban Treefrog (Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 176; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 325; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 12; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 61; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 12; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 11; Hedges, Powell, Henderson, Hanson, and Murphy, 2019, Caribb. Herpetol., 67: 13). 

Distribution

West Indies: native on Cuba, Isla de Pinos (now Isla de Juventud), Cayman Is., Bahama Is.; introduced on northwestern Puerto Rico, Curacao, St. Maarten and Saba (Netherlands Antilles), North Caicos (Turks and Caicos Islands), Nevis, Antigua, Oahu (Hawaii), U.S. Virgin Is., British Virgin Is. (St. Martin and Tortola), Anguilla, southeastern Louisiana, much of Florida and adjacent coastal Georgia and Mississippi (USA), and Puerto Limón, Costa Rica.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Virgin Islands, British

Introduced: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States of America, United States of America - Florida, United States of America - Georgia, United States of America - Hawaii, United States of America - Louisiana, United States of America - Mississippi, Virgin Islands, U.S.

Comment

Reviewed by Duellman and Crombie, 1970, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 92: 1–4 (as Hyla septentrionalis). See Powell, Passaro, and Henderson, 1992, Caribb. J. Sci., 28: 234–235, for St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. See discussion of species nomenclature by Mittleman, 1950, Herpetologica, 6: 24–26, in which he suggested that Hyla septentrionalis Schlegel, 1837, is not a nomen nudum and applies to Hyla chalconota. Anguilla record by Townsend, Eaton, Powell, Parmerlee, and Henderson, 2000, Caribb. J. Sci., 36: 326–328. See account by Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 338–340. Introduced Florida population discussed by Butterfield, Meshaka, and Guyer, 1997, in Simberloff et al. (eds.), Strangers in Paradise: 123-138. Lever, 2003, Naturalized Rept. Amph. World: 180183, reported on introduced population in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico Virgin Islands, St. Martin, Anguilla, and Nevis. Owen, Perry, Lazell, Petrovic, and Egelhoff, 2005, Herpetol. Rev., 36: 76, provided a record for Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Powell, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 215, provided a record for Saba I., Netherlands Antilles. Johnson, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 349, provided the record for Georgia, USA. Lindsay and Cooper, 2008, Appl. Herpetol., 5: 96–98, reported an introduced population on Antigua, West Indies. An introduced population in Curacao was reported by van Burt, 2007, Appl. Herpetol., 4: 390–391. Díaz and Cádiz, 2008, Guía Taxon. Anf. Cuba: 127–128, provided a brief account, illustration, and map. Meshaka, Boundy, and Williams, 2009, J. Kansas Herpetol., 32: 13–16, suggested that the expanding introduced population in Florida, USA, can be expected to extend west and south completely around the Gulf of Mexico. Wilson and Bechler, 2010, Herpetol. Rev., 41: 376, provided a northern Florida, USA, record of Nassau Country. Stevenson and Somma, 2011, Herpetol. Rev., 42: 107–108, provided a record for northern Florida and discussed the particulars of that introduced range. Reynolds, Niemiller, Riggs, and Manco, 2011, Herpetol. Rev., 42: 237–238, provided a record from the Turks and Caicos Islands. Henderson and Powell, 2009, Nat. Hist. Rept. Amph. W. Indies: 86–89, summarized the natural history literature. Meshaka, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 463–465, and Dodd, 2013, Frogs U.S. and Canada, 2: 822–827, provided an account that summarized the relevant literature particularly with reference to the introduced USA populations. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 245, provided a brief summary of natural history for the this species and provided a range map for Costa Rica and photograph for this species. Rivalta González, Rodríguez Schettino, Mancina, and Iturriaga, 2014, Smithson. Herpetol. Inform. Serv., 145: 34–36, provided a dot map and localities for Cuba. Hedges, 2011, Caribb. Herpetol., 20: 1, reported the introduced species in northwestern Puerto Rico. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 202, provided an account of larval morphology and biology. Rodriguez, Börner, Pabijan, Gehara, Haddad, and Vences, 2015, Evol. Ecol., 29: 765–785 (and supplemental data), reported on phylogeographic diversity and its causes. Jarboe, Colbert, Moore, Steen, and Johnson, 2019, Herpetol. Rev., 50: 97–98, provided new records and discussed the range in Georgia, USA. De Massary, Bochaton, Bour, Dewynter, Ineich, Vidal, and Lescure, 2018, Bull. Soc. Herpetol. France, 166: 59-78, reported the species from Saint-Barthélemy in the Lesser Antilles. De Massary, Bour, Dewynter, Ineich, Vidal, and Lescure, 2017, Bull. Soc. Herpetol. France, 164: 37–54, reported the species from Saint Martin, Lesser Antilles. Lieto and Burke, 2019, Herpetol. Rev., 50: 474–479, discussed the spread of invasive populations in the USA. Lindsay, Orchard, and Yokoyama, 2019, IRCF Rept. & Amph., 26: 125–126, reported tadpoles from an introduced population in Nevis I., Lesser Antilles. González-Sánchez, Johnson, González-Solís, Fucsko, and Wilson, 2021, ZooKeys, 1022: 92, discussed the introduced population in Costa Rica. Introduced populations in Florida, Mississippi, and Georgia, USA, discussed and mapped to county by Meshaka, Collins, Bury, and McCallum, 2022, Exotic Amph. Rept. USA: 45–47.

  

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
• For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.