Title: Redescriptions of Three Little-Known Eleutherodactylus from Northwestern Ecuador (Amphibia: Leptodactylidae)
Abstract:Peters (1955) published a list of herpetological type-localities in Ecuador. For most of the species of Eleutherodactylus named from South America, the type-locality is the only known locality at whic...Peters (1955) published a list of herpetological type-localities in Ecuador. For most of the species of Eleutherodactylus named from South America, the type-locality is the only known locality at which the species has been collected. This paucity of knowledge does not reflect the rarity of species so much as it reflects the lack of collections, difficulty of identification of specimens, and failure of herpetologists to report on eleutherodactyline frogs. The species of the genus Eleutherodactylus are difficult to identify inasmuch as there is little in the way of useful literature on the genus in South America. Few specimens of the genus are collected by the diurnal collector except at higher elevations in the Andes where the populations of the relatively few species which occur there are very large. In the course of field work in Ecuador by William E. Duellman, myself, and other parties from the University of Kansas, we have collected several hundreds of specimens of Eleutherodactylus representing nearly 75 species. More species of the genus have been named from Ecuador (49) than from any other political unit in the Americas. Of the numerous named forms, many lack precise locality data. The purpose of this paper is to record locality records and other information concerning three little-known species of the genus from northwestern Ecuador. As noted by Peters (1960), Ecuador is made up of three obvious parts (Pacific lowlands, Andes, and Amazonian lowlands), which are not to be confused with zoogeographic units. Eleutherodactyline frogs occur in most regions of Ecuador but as yet are not known from the Guayas region. There are at least three faunal regions on the Pacific lowlands and slopes of Ecuador (1. The Guayas region; 2. The Esmeraldas region, the very wet Ecuadorian component of the Choco which narrows to the south and is restricted to the base of the Andes; and 3. The slope region, which is found between 1000 and 3000 meters on the Pacific slopes of at least the northern two-thirds of the Ecuadorian Andes. Some members of this faunal group get into the interandean basins or valleys). Peters (1960) considered the interandean faunal unit to beRead More
Publication Year: 1970
Publication Date: 1970-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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