Hyperolius tuberculatus (Mocquard, 1897)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Hyperoliidae > Subfamily: Hyperoliinae > Genus: Hyperolius > Species: Hyperolius tuberculatus

Rappia tuberculata Mocquard, 1897, Bull. Soc. Philomath., Paris, Ser. 8, 9: 18; also Mocquard, 1897, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, 3: 55. Holotype: MNHNP 96.570, according to Guibé, 1950 "1948", Cat. Types Amph. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat.: 57. Type locality: "Lambaréné", Gabon.

Hyperolius tuberculatus — Noble, 1924, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 49: 269; Ahl, 1931, Das Tierreich, 55: 373 (as synonym of Hyperolius acutirostris); Laurent, 1951, Ann. Soc. R. Zool. Belg., 82: 34; Perret and Mertens, 1957, Bull. Inst. Franç. Afr. Noire, Ser. A, 19: 574.

Hyperolius tuberculatus tuberculatus — Schiøtz, 1971, Vidensk. Medd. Dansk Naturhist. Foren., 134: 21–76, by implication; Laurent, 1972, Explor. Parc Natl. Virunga, Ser. 2, 22: 82-83; Laurent, 1983, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 18: 11.

English Names

Rainforest Reed Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 68).

Rough Reed Frog (Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 172).

Distribution

Gabon, Bioko Island (Equatorial Guinea) and Cameroon confirmed by molecular data; other localities, not so confirmed from the rainforests of southeastern Nigeria, western Central African Republic, and Dem. Rep. Congo have also been reported; expected in the Cabinda Enclave, Angola. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural resident: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria

Likely/controversial occurrence in political unit: Angola

Comment

In the Hyperolius viridiflavus superspecies according to Schiøtz, 1975, Treefrogs E. Afr.: 172. Frétey and Blanc, 2002 "2001", Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 126: 383, reported this species from Gabon. Lasso, Rial, Castroviejo, and De la Riva, 2002, Graellsia, 58: 21–34, provided notes on ecological distribution in Equatorial Guinea. See account for Cameroon by Amiet, 2012, Rainettes Cameroun: 184–194 (in the sense of including Hyperolius dintelmanni). Channing, Rödel, and Channing, 2012, Tadpoles of Africa: 225–226, provided information on comparative larval morphology. Schiøtz, 1999, Treefrogs Afr.: 196–197, provided a brief account. Nagy, Chifundera, Collet, and Gvoždík, 2013, Herpetol. Notes, 6:  413–419, provided a record from Bas-Congo, southwestern Dem. Rep. Congo. Bell, Parra, Badjedjea, Barej, Blackburn, Burger, Channing, Dehling, Greenbaum, Gvoždík, Kielgast, Kasumba, Lötters, McLaughlin, Nagy, Rödel, Portik, Stuart, VanDerWal, Zassi-Boulou, and Zamudio, 2017, Mol. Ecol., 26: 5224–5244, discussed molecular biogeography, phylogenetics, and systematics, and excluding Hyperolius dintelmanni from synonymy and considered this species to be a member of the Hyperolius tuberculatus complex, along with Hyperolius dintelmanni and Hyperolius hutsebauti. Deichmann, Mulcahy, Vanthomme, Tobi, Wynn, Zimkus, and McDiarmid, 2017, PLoS One, 12 (11: e0187283): 19, suggested that substantial confusion exists in GenBank with respect to what is really Hyperolius tuberculatus. Baptista, Conradie, Vaz Pinto, and Branch, 2019, In Huntley, Russo, Lages, and Ferrand (eds.), Biodiversity in Angola: 256, noted specimens in the Luango-Nzambi, Dem. Rep. Congo, near the Cabinda Enclave, Angola, suggesting its possible occurrence there. Dewynter and Frétey, 2019, Cah. Fondation Biotope, 27: 28, summarized the literature for Gabon and provided photographs (p. 59). Dehling and Sinsch, 2019, Zool. Anz., 280: 65–77, considered this to be in the Hyperolius viridiflavus group. Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 172–173, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. See brief account, range map, and photographs for Equatorial Guinea in Sánchez-Vialas, Calvo-Revuelta, Castroviejo-Fisher, and De la Riva, 2020, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 66: 137–230. Kako-Wanzalire, Mongo, Ilonga, Mapoli, Mbumba, Neema, Tungaluna, Itoka, and Bogaert, 2021, Tropicultura, 39 (1: 1709): 1–19, briefly discussed habitat preference in north-central Dem. Rep. Congo. Channing, 2022, Zootaxa, 5134: 301–354, discussed the systematics, reidentified a number of GenBank sequences, restricted the range by excluding a number of populations, provided a range map, molecular tree, and a summary of the color patterns for all of the named taxa in the synonymy, and characterized the advertisement call. 

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