Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Ptychadena nana Perret, 1980

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ptychadenidae > Genus: Ptychadena > Species: Ptychadena nana

Ptychadena nana Perret, 1980, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 13: 160. Holotype: ZMB 26878H, by original designation. Type locality: "'Somaliland', Didda, Est Plateau, Arussi, Ethiopia, 2000–3000 m".

Rana (Ptychadena) nana — Dubois, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 233, by implication.

Ptychadena (Ptychadena) nana — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 316.

English Names

Somali Grassland Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 105).

Smallest Grass Frog (Largen and Spawls, 2010, Amph. Rept. Ethiopia Eritrea: 191).

Distribution

Restricted to the Arussi Plateau, Oromia, Ethiopia, 2380 to 2850 m, limited by the Shebelle River in the south and on the northeast by the Great Rift Valley and westernmost populations about 4 km west of Ch'ange.

Comment

Holotype originally in syntypic series of Ptychadena neumanni according to Borkin, 1985, in Frost (ed.), Amph. Species World: 473. Largen, 2001, Tropical Zool., 14: 339–340, commented on distribution and difficulty in identification. See account and map for Ethiopia by Largen and Spawls, 2010, Amph. Rept. Ethiopia Eritrea: 191, for this species that had not been collected since 1900, even though reported as locally abundant in the IUCN Red List account from 2013. Böhme and Rödder, 2011, North-West. J. Zool., Romania, 7: 322–324, reported an additional specimen from the Arussi Mountains but did not report on when it was collected or by whom. The authors also discussed a possible unnamed species in Bale National Park, Ethiopia, which seems to be have been considered by the IUCN Red List as Ptychadena nana. Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 342–343, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Freilich, Tollis, and Boissinot, 2014, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 71: 160, identified specimens from the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia as Ptychadena nana using molecular markers. See Goutte, Reyes-Velasco, Freilich, Kassie, and Boissinot, 2021, ZooKeys, 1016: 77–141, for detailed account, phylogenetic placement, morphometrics, advertisement call, habitat, and placement in their Ptychadena erlangeri group of the Ptychadena neumanni complex. See Goutte, Reyes-Velasco, Freilich, Kassie, and Boissinot, 2021, ZooKeys, 1016: 77–141, and Reyes-Velasco, Goutte, Freilich, and Boissinot, 2021, ZooKeys, 1070: 135–149, for detailed accounts, phylogenetic placement, morphometrics, advertisement call, habitat, and placement in their Ptychadena neumanni group of the Ptychadena neumanni complex as well as evidence that Bale Mountain specimens are referrable to Ptychadena robeensis.

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 additional sources of information from other sites search Google
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 related information on conservation and images as well as observation see iNaturalist; for a quick link to their maps see iNaturalist KML
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.