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

Lithobates vaillanti (Brocchi, 1877)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ranidae > Genus: Lithobates > Species: Lithobates vaillanti

Rana Vaillanti Brocchi, 1877, Bull. Soc. Philomath., Paris, Ser. 7, 1: 175. Holotype: MNHNP 6328 according to Guibé, 1950 "1948", Cat. Types Amph. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat.: 39. Type locality: "Belize (Honduras)" = Belize, Belize; corrected to "sur les bords de la rivière de Mullins, près de Belize ([British] Honduras)" by Brocchi, 1881, Miss. Scient. Mex. Amer. Centr., Rech. Zool., 3(2, livr. 1): 12; given as "Mullins River, near Belize, British Honduras" by Kellogg, 1932, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 160: 1–224.

Rana bonaccana Günther, 1900, Biol. Centr. Amer., Rept. Batr., Vol. 7, Part 153: 201. Syntypes: BMNH ("several specimens") these being 1947.2.2.17–18 (formerly 1895.7.15.8–9), 1947.2.2.19–22 (formerly 1895.7.15.21–24), and 1947.2.2.23 (formerly 1901.12.19.1) by museum records. Type locality: "Mexico [actually Belize], Island of Bonacca, off the coast of Yucatan". Synonymy with Rana palmipes by Boulenger, 1901, Zool. Rec., 37: 27. Synonymy with Rana vaillanti by Hillis and de Sá, 1988, Herpetol. Monogr., 2: 13.

Rana brevipalmata rhoadsi Fowler, 1913, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 65: 166. Holotype: ANSP 18051, by original designation. The reference to UMMZ 52931 as a "cotype" by Peters, 1952, Occas. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, 539: 21, likely denotes paratypic status. Type locality: "Bucay, Province of Guayas, Ecuador". Synonymy with Rana palmipes by Boulenger, 1919, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 9, 3: 415. Synonymy with Rana vaillanti by Hillis and de Sá, 1988, Herpetol. Monogr., 2: 13.

Rana palmipes hoffmanni Müller, 1924, Mitt. Zool. Mus. Berlin, 11: 80. Holotype: ZMB 4900, by original designation. Type locality: "Costarica". Synonymy by XXX.

Rana (Rana) vaillanti — Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 41, by implication.

Rana (Lithobates) vaillanti — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 330; Hillis, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 42: 335–336, by implication; Yuan, Zhou, Chen, Poyarkov, Chen, Jang-Liaw, Chou, Matzke, Iizuka, Min, Kuzmin, Zhang, Cannatella, Hillis, and Che, 2016, Syst. Biol., 65: 835.

Rana (Novirana, Sierrana, Ranula, Lithobates) vaillanti — Hillis and Wilcox, 2005, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 34: 305. See Dubois, 2006, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 42: 317–330, Hillis, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 42: 331–338, and Dubois, 2007, Cladistics, 23: 390–402, for relevant discussion of nomenclature. Invalid name formulation under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (1999) as discussed by Dubois, 2007, Cladistics, 23: 395.

Lithobates vaillanti — 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: 369; Che, Pang, Zhao, Wu, Zhao, and Zhang, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 43: 1–13, by implication.

Lithobates (Lithobates) vaillanti — Dubois, 2006, C. R. Biol., Paris, 329: 829; Dubois, 2006, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 42: 325.

Common Names

Vaillant's Frog (Liner, 1994, Herpetol. Circ., 23: 28; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 110; Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 126; Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 97; Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 129; Liner and Casas-Andreu, 2008, Herpetol. Circ., 38: 17).

Common Marsh-Frog (Arteaga-Navarro, Bustamante, and Guayasamin, 2013, Amph. Rept. Mindo: 117; Hedges, Powell, Henderson, Hanson, and Murphy, 2019, Caribb. Herpetol., 67: 15).

Distribution

Low and moderate elevations from north-central Veracruz and northern Oaxaca to the central Río Magdalena region in Colombia on the Atlantic versant and on the Pacific versant in southeastern Oaxaca and northwestern Chiapas, Mexico, and from northwestern Nicaragua to southwestern Ecuador, 0–1700 m (see comment).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama

Comment

In the subgenus Lithobates of Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 329–330. In the Rana palmipes group and resurrected from the synonymy of Rana palmipes by Hillis and de Sá, 1988, Herpetol. Monogr., 2: 1–26, where it had been placed by Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 577–942. Lips and Savage, 1996, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 109: 17–26, included this species (as rana vaillanti) in a key to the tadpoles found in Costa Rica. See accounts by Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 126–128, Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 97; Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 129–131; Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 402–403; and McCranie and Wilson, 2002, Amph. Honduras: 490–494. Acosta-Galvis, 1999, Rev. Acad. Colomb. Cienc. Exact. Fis. Nat., 23: 214–224, discussed Colombian populations. Hillis and Wilcox, 2005, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 34: 308, noted that the population in western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador is not conspecific with other, more northerly populations, easily distinguished by tadpole morphology and on the basis of molecular evidence more closely related to Lithobates palmipes than to other populations of Lithobates vaillanti. McCranie, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 38, summarized the departmental distribution in Honduras. See comments by Sunyer, Páiz, Dehling, and Köhler, 2009, Herpetol. Notes, 2: 189–202, regarding Nicaraguan populations. Arteaga-Navarro, Bustamante, and Guayasamin, 2013, Amph. Rept. Mindo: 115–119, provided an account and dot map for Ecuador. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 291–295, provided a brief summary of natural history and identification key for the species of Lithobates in Central America and provided a range map and photograph for this species. Ovalle-Pacheco, Camacho-Rozo, and Arroyo, 2019, Check List, 15: 398–399, reported the species from Boyacá, Colombia, and commented on the range in Colombia. Coelho, Camurugi, and Garda, 2023, Organisms Divers. Evol., 23: 967–981, reported on niche divergence, phylogenetics, and biogeography as part of the Lithobates palmipes group (as the Rana palmipes group). Martínez-Fonseca, Holmes, Sunyer, Westeen, Grundler, Cerda, Fernández-Mena, Loza-Molina, Monagan, Nondorf, Pandelis, and Rabosky, 2024, Check List, 20: 76, provided and discussed a record from Refugio Bartola, Departamento Río San Juan, Nicaragua.

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For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
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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 additional information specific to Ecuador see FaunaWebEcuador: Anfibios del Ecuador
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.