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

Hylarana gracilis (Gravenhorst, 1829)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ranidae > Genus: Hylarana > Species: Hylarana gracilis

Rana gracilis Gravenhorst, 1829, Delic. Mus. Zool. Vratislav., 1: 45. Holotype: Frog figured in plate 8, fig. 3 of Gravenhorst, 1829; stated to be in "museo Lampeano". Type locality: Not stated; given as "Sri Lanka" by Dutta and Manamendra-Arachchi, 1996, Amph. Fauna Sri Lanka: 123; and "Ceylon" by Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 158. Population from "Nachchaduwa, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka" considered to exhibit the characteristics of the holotype figured, according to Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 323.

Lymnodytes macularius Blyth, 1855 "1854", J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 23: 299. Types: Not stated; stated to not be in the museum (presumably ZSIC) by Theobald, 1868, J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 37: 84; ZSIC 10037 is holotype according to Sclater, 1892, List Batr. Indian Mus.: 8. Type locality: "Ceylon" (= Sri Lanka). Synonymy by Boulenger, 1890, Fauna Brit. India, Rept. Batr.: 456; Sclater, 1892, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1892: 345; Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 141.

Hylorana macularia — Günther, 1864, Rept. Brit. India: 425.

Limnodytes macularius — Theobald, 1868, J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 37: 84.

Rana macularia — Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 60.

Rana (Hylorana) gracilis — Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 127–130.

Rana (Hylorana) gracilis gracilis — Rao, 1922, J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 28: 439.

Rana (Hylarana) gracilis — Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 42, by implication.

Rana (Sylvirana) gracilis — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 326.

Hylarana gracilis — Chen, Murphy, Lathrop, Ngo, Orlov, Ho, and Somorjai, 2005, Herpetol. J., 15: 237, by implication; Che, Pang, Zhao, Wu, Zhao, and Zhang, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 43: 3; by implication; Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 423.

Sylvirana gracilis — Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 370; Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Herpetol. Sinica, 12: 34. See comment under Ranidae record.

Hydrophylax gracilis — Oliver, Prendini, Kraus, and Raxworthy, 2015, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 90: 190.

English Names

Gravenhorst's Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 107).

Sri Lanka Wood Frog (de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 90).

Gravenhorst's Golden-backed Frog (Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 323).

Slender Stream Frog (Ganesh and Guptha, 2021, J. Anim. Diversity, 3(3): 30).

Distribution

Widely distributed in Sri Lanka below 500 m elevation; Gounithimmepalle, Koundanya Wildlife Sanctuary, Andhra Pradesh, India, in the Eastern Ghats.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: India, Sri Lanka

Comment

Prior to the revision of Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297, placed in the Section Hylarana, subsection Hydrophylax, subgenus Sylvirana of Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 326. See accounts by Boulenger, 1920, Rec. Indian Mus., 20: 141; Kirtisinghe, 1957, Amph. Ceylon: 48–49; and See account by Dutta and Manamendra-Arachchi, 1996, Amph. Fauna Sri Lanka: 123–126. South India records are referable to Rana malabarica and Rana temporalis; southeastern Asian records are referable to the Limnonectes limnocharis complex according to Dutta, 1985, in Frost (ed.), Amph. Species World: 493. Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 158–159, provided range, systematic comments, and partial taxonomic bibliography. de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 90, provided a brief account and color photograph. Bopage, Wewelwala, Krvavac, Jovanovic, Safarek, and Pushpamal, 2011, Salamandra, 47: 173–177, reported the species in lowland forest in the Kanneliya Forest of southwestern Sri Lanka. In the Hylarana malabarica group of Biju, Garg, Mahony, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, and Meegaskumbura, 2014, Contr. Zool., Amsterdam, 83: 269–335, who provided an account. Ganesh and Guptha, 2021, J. Anim. Diversity, 3(3): 30, provided records of Hydrophylax cf. gracilis from the Eastern Ghats, Andhra Pradesh, India. Bharath, Dinesh, Karuthapandi, Kunte, Shabnam, Jaiswal, and Jadhav, 2024, Zootaxa, 5453: 129–134, provided a genetically confirmed record from Gounithimmepalle, Koundanya Wildlife Sanctuary, Andhra Pradesh, southern India, and discussed the range in India.

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 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.