A new golden frog species of the genus Diasporus (Amphibia, Eleutherodactylidae) from the Cordillera Central, western Panama.

Andreas Hertz,Sebastian Lotzkat,Frank Hauenschild,Gunther Köhler

doi:10.3897/zookeys.196.2774

Andreas Hertz, Sebastian Lotzkat + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.196.2774

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Abstract

We describe the frog species Diasporus citrinobapheus sp. n. from the Cordillera Central of western Panama. The new species differs from all other species in its genus in coloration, disk cover and disk pad shape, skin texture, advertisement call, and size. It is most similar to Diasporus tigrillo, from which it differs in dorsal skin texture, relative tibia length, number of vomerine teeth, ventral coloration, dorsal markings, and relative tympanum size, and to Diasporus gularis, from which it can be distinguished by the lack of membranes between the toes, adult size, posterior thigh coloration, and position of the choanae. We provide data on morpho- logy, vocalization, and distribution of the new species, as well as brief information on its natural history.

Highlights

Panama’s herpetofauna is known to be the most diverse in consideration of its size in Central America, with only Mexico being more diverse in absolute species count (Myers and Duellman 1982; Jaramillo et al 2010)
Diasporus citrinobapheus is distinguishable from all other known frogs of the genus in Lower Central America by its bright yellow to orange coloration
The only described species of the genus that somewhat resemble the new species in coloration are D. gularis from Colombia and Ecuador and D. tigrillo from the Caribbean slopes of the Costa Rican part of the Serranía de Talamanca

Summary

Introduction

Panama’s herpetofauna is known to be the most diverse in consideration of its size in Central America, with only Mexico being more diverse in absolute species count (Myers and Duellman 1982; Jaramillo et al 2010). Herpetological research has been conducted in Panama for more than a hundred years (Ibáñez et al 2001), the knowledge of amphibian species diversity is still far from being completed. This is demonstrated impressively by the multitude of amphibian species described from this country within the last years The species of Diasporus are distributed from eastern Honduras to western Ecuador (Frost 2011; Köhler 2011). The genus contains nine described species, five of which (Diasporus diastema Cope, D. hylaeformis Cope, D. tigrillo Savage, D. ventrimaculatus Chaves, García-Rodríguez, Mora and Leal, and D. vocator Taylor) are currently known to occur in western Panama and/or southern Costa Rica. The purpose of this paper is to describe this new species

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