Ptychadena nana Perret, 1980

Common Names

Smallest Rocket Frog (Spawls, Mazuch, and Mohammad, 2023, Handb. Amph. Rept. NE Afr.: 107).

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.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Ethiopia

Endemic: Ethiopia

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 Teme, 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 Teme, 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. Lyra, Kirchhof, Goutte, Kassie Teme, and Boissinot, 2023, Frontiers in Genetics, 14(1215715): 1–14, reported on the diversification and biogeography on the Ethiopian highlands, provided a dot map, and considered the species to be in the Ptychadena erlangeri clade. Spawls, Mazuch, and Mohammad, 2023, Handb. Amph. Rept. NE Afr.: 107–108, provided an account addressing identification, natural history, conservation status, and range, including a map.

External links:

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• 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.