Ptychadena neumanni (Ahl, 1924)

Common Names

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

Neumann's Grass Frog (Largen and Spawls, 2010, Amph. Rept. Ethiopia Eritrea: 189).

Distribution

Found on both sides of the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia, and limited to the south and southwest (5.80–8.20°N, 35.36–38.64°E), 1409 to 2449 m elevation. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Ethiopia

Endemic: Ethiopia

Comment

See comment under Ptychadena nana. Largen, 2001, Tropical Zool., 14: 338–339, discussed distribution and the difficulty in separating Ptychadena erlangeri and Ptychadena neumanni by external morphology alone. See discussion by Largen, 2001, Tropical Zool., 14: 340–342. See account, photograph, and map for Ethiopia by Largen and Spawls, 2010, Amph. Rept. Ethiopia Eritrea: 188–190, who suggested that this name represents a complex of species of which Ptychadena largeni is only questionably separated. Freilich, Tollis, and Boissinot, 2014, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 71: 157–169, presented molecular evidence that nominal Ptychadena neumanni is composed of at least five species, two of which (sp. 2 and 3) form the sister taxon of Ptychadena erlangeri, one of which is the sister taxon of that group (sp. 4), another that is the sister taxon of that inclusive group (sp. 1), and a fifth (sp. 5) that is the sister taxon of Ptychadena cooperi. This overall complex surrounds Ptychadena nana phylogenetically as well. Geographically they are known definitively from: 1: moist evergreen forests of the southwest to the grasslands in the vicinity of Addis Ababa; 2: widely distributed on both side of the Great Rift and limited to grasslands (Ptychadena largeni); 3: Bale Mountains (now Ptychadena levenorum); 4: southern part of the Eastern Highlands (now Ptychadena goweri); 5: western highlands, north of the Blue Nile Valley (now Ptychadena amharensis). Channing and Rödel, 2019, Field Guide Frogs & Other Amph. Afr.: 340–341, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. 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 neumanni group of the Ptychadena neumanni complex. Specific results of this study were the decisive separation of Ptychadena erlangeri (reported by Freilich et al., 2014, and Reyes et al., 2018) as Ptychadena cf. neumanni 2). Kassie Teme, Bekele Simegn, and Afework Bogale, 2022, Global Ecol. Conserv., 38 (e02211): 1–12, reported the species from Keffa Zone, southwestern Ethiopia, and discussed habitat. 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 neumanni clade. 

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• 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.