Hypopachus variolosus (Cope, 1866)

Common Names

Mexican Narrow-mouthed Toad (Hypopachus variolosus: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 78).

Sheep Frog (Hypopachus variolosus: Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 176; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 11; Liner, 1994, Herpetol. Circ., 23: 25; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 90; Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 119; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 12; Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 92; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 11; Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 123; Frost, McDiarmid, and Mendelson, 2008, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 37: 6; Liner and Casas-Andreu, 2008, Herpetol. Circ., 38: 15; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 8; Frost, McDiarmid, Mendelson, and Green, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 16; Frost, Lemmon, McDiarmid, and Mendelson, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 12).

Taylor's Toad (Hypopachus cuneus [no longer recognized]: Strecker, 1915, Baylor Univ. Bull., 18: 47; Wright and Wright, 1933, Handb. Frogs Toads U.S. Canada: xi).

Brownsville Narrow-mouthed Toad (Hypopachus cuneus cuneus [no longer recognized]: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 78).

Distribution

Southern Texas (USA) and southern Sonora and adjacent southwestern Chihuahua to Queretaro (Mexico) south in lowlands and foothills (including the Balsas Depression of southern Mexico) to northern Costa Rica at elevations mostly below 1600 m; Isla Maria Madre in the Tres Marias Archipelago of Nayarit, Mexico.    

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, United States of America, United States of America - Texas

Comment

See Nelson, 1973, Herpetologica, 29: 6–17, and Nelson, 1974, Herpetologica, 30: 250–274, for discussion of geographic variation, rejection of subspecies, and synonymy. Lips and Savage, 1996, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 109: 17–26, included this species in a key to the tadpoles found in Costa Rica. See accounts by Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 119–121; Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 92–93; Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 123–125; Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 394–397, and McCranie and Wilson, 2002, Amph. Honduras: 469–473. Smith, Lemos-Espinal, and Chiszar, 2005, Herpetol. Rev., 36: 75, provided the record for southwestern Chihuahua. Lemos-Espinal, 2007, Anf. Rept. Chihuahua Mexico: 54–55, provided an account for Chihuahua, Mexico. Köhler, Veselý, and Greenbaum, 2005 "2006", Amph. Rept. El Salvador: 65–66, provided an account (for El Salvador) and a color photograph. McCranie, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 38, summarized the departmental distribution in Honduras. Frost and Aird, 1978, Herpetol. Rev., 9: 61, provided a record for Aguascalientes, Mexico. Farr, Lazcano, and Lavín-Murcio, 2009, Herpetol. Rev., 40: 459–467, provided new records for Tamaulipas, Mexico, and commented on the range. Ahumada-Carrillo, Vázquez-Huizar, Vázquez-Diaz, and García-Vázquez, 2011, Herpetol. Rev., 42: 397, provided a record for southern Zacatecas, Mexico, and discussed the range. Travers, Townsend, Sunyer, Obando, Wilson, and Nickerson, 2011, Herpetol. Rev., 42: 399, noted a new locality in Nicaragua (Jinotega). Greenbaum, Smith, and de Sá, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 265–277, reported on molecular phylogeographic data that suggested an East Coast/West Coast dichotomy that might correspond to a species distinction as well as several distinctive populations within each of these major divisions. Lemos-Espinal and Dixon, 2013, Amphibians and Reptiles of San Luis Potosí: 66–67, provided an account for San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Judd and Irwin, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 506–508, and Dodd, 2013, Frogs U.S. and Canada, 1: 455–457, provided accounts that summarized the relevant literature, particularly for the USA population. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 287–288, provided a brief summary of natural history and provided a range map, and photograph of this species. Sunyer, Martínez-Fonseca, Salazar-Saavedra, Galindo-Uribe, and Obando, 2014, Mesoam. Herpetol., 1: 174, provided a record for the department of Rivas, Nicaragua. Elliot, Gerhardt, and Davidson, 2009, Frogs and Toads of N. Am.: 282–283, provided an account, photos, and advertisement call for the USA population. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 219, provided an account of larval morphology and biology. Ruballo-Marroquín and Morán-Hidalgo, 2013, Rev. Biodivers. Neotrop., 3: 65–68, provided a record for the department of La Libertad, El Salvador. Rorabaugh and Lemos-Espinal, 2016, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Sonora: 175–177, provided a detailed account of natural history, morphology, distribution, and conservation status in Sonora, Mexico. Lemos-Espinal and Dixon, 2016, Amph. Rept. Hidalgo: 388–389, provided a brief account and map for Hidalgo, Mexico. Quezada-Hipólito, Smith, Suazo-Ortuño, Alvarado-Díaz, González, Thammachoti, and Smart, 2019, Rev. Mexicana Biodiversidad, 90(e902448): 1–15, commented on the impact of vulcanism in the Trans-Volcanic belt of Mexico on biogeography. Ahumada-Carrillo, Grünwald, López Cuellar, and Jones, 2020, Herpetol. Rev., 51: 277–278, reported the species from the municipality of Villa de Guerrero, northern Jalisco, Mexico. Isla Maria Madre in the Tres Marias Archipelago of Nayarit, Mexico, according to Nolasco Luna, Barraza-Soltero, López-Montes, Moreno-López, and Escobedo Galván, 2022, Check List, 18: 244. Tepos-Ramírez, Garduño-Fonseca, Peralta-Robles, García-Rubio, and Cervantes Jiménez, 2023, Check List, 19: 269–292, discussed the distribution and conservation status of the species in Queretaro, Mexico. Bassett, 2023, Reptiles & Amphibians, 30(e18486): 1–18, provided an updated county distribution map for Texas, USA. Loc-Barragán, Smith, Woolrich-Piña, and Lemos-Espinal, 2024, Herpetozoa, Wien, 37: 30, reported on the distributional and conservation status in the state of Nayarit, Mexico.   

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• 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.