Herpetology Notes, volume 9: 23-26 (2016) (published online on 17 February 2016)
Geographic extension of Ecnomiohyla miliaria (Cope, 1886) (Anura: Hylidae) for Colombia
Alejandro Valencia-Zuleta1,2,*, Andrés F. Jaramillo-Martínez1,3, Victoria E. Cardona-Botero1 and Fernando Castro-Herrera1
Abstract. Tree frogs of the genus Ecnomiohyla possess characteristics of natural history that makes them exceptionally rare and poorly documented. Most of them are mainly distributed in the lowlands of Middle America. Herein we present a new record of this genus for Colombia and the first for E. miliaria.
Keywords: Biogeographic Chocó, Cope’s Brown Treefrog, Marvelous Frogs, Treefrogs, Valle del Cauca.
The genus Ecnomiohyla Faivovich, Haddad, and Williams, 1985), E. miotympanum (Cope, 1863), Garcia, Frost, Campbell, and Wheeler, 2005, was E. phantasmagoria (Dunn, 1943), E. rabborum described and diagnosed through nuclear proteins, Mendelson, Savage, Griffith, Ross, Kubicki, and mitochondrial and ribosomal genes transformations; Gagliardo, 2008, E. salvaje (Wilson, McCranie, and it is comprised mainly by species of Hyla tuberculosa Williams, 1985), E. sukia Savage and Kubicki, 2010, E. group (sensu Duellman [1970], excluding the now thysanota (Duellman, 1966), E. tuberculosa (Boulenger, called Ptychohyla dendrophasma) and one species from 1882), E. valancifer (Firschein and Smith, 1956), and the H. miotympanun group (Faivovich et al., 2005). E. veraguensis Batista, Hertz, Mebert, Köhler, Lotzkat, Nevertheless, other molecular works suggest that this Ponce, and Vesely, 2014. These are distributed from genus might not be monophyletic (Wiens et al., 2010; the humid forests of the southeastern Mexico highlands Pyron and Wiens, 2011). passing along Middle America through the northwest of Currently, this genus is composed of 14 species: Colombia to the Amazonian upper basin of Brazil, Peru, Ecnomiohyla bailarina Batista, Hertz, Mebert, Ecuador and Colombia (Ortega–Andrade et al., 2010; Köhler, Lotzkat, Ponce, and Vesely, 2014, E. echinata Frost, 2014). (Duellman, 1961), E. fimbrimembra (Taylor, 1948), E. Ecnomiohyla miliaria was described by Cope (1886) miliaria (Cope, 1886), E. minera (Wilson, McCranie, from a male collected by Dr. J. F. Bransford in Nicaragua. Inhabits from the humid lowlands and premontane slopes east of Honduras and southeast of Nicaragua to the southeast Atlantic versant in Costa Rica (20 –900 m), and in the pacific southwestern versant of Costa 1 Grupo de investigación Laboratorio de Herpetología, Departamento de Biología, Universidad del Valle, A.A. Rica and west of Panama between 1000-1300 m of 25360, Santiago de Cali, Colombia. altitude (Savage, 2002; Frost, 2014). Given this wide 2 Laboratório de herpetologia e comportamento animal, distribution, it is likely it may represent more than one Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Animal, undescribed species (Batista et al., 2014). Savage and Universidade Federal de Goiás, ICB IV, Caixa Postal 131, Kubicki (2010) mentioned that some specimens of the 74001-970 Goiânia, GO, Brazil. west of Panama present similar characteristics to E. 3 Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul miliaria and E. sukia. However, characteristics such (PUCRS), Laboratório de Sistemática de Vertebrados, Av. Ipiranga 6681, Porto Alegre, RS 90619-900, Brazil as the type of tuberculation on the surface of the head, * Corresponding author e-mail: upper eyelids and body, and the condition of the heel [email protected] tubercles, make it difficult to assign them to any of these 24 Alejandro Valencia-Zuleta et al.
An adult male (SVL 114.2 mm) was found active at 20:30 h in a branch of a Myrtaceae at 500 cm above the ground (Figure. 2). The individual could be identified as E. miliaria by (1) the presence of several tubercles in the heel (Figure 3F); (2) the following webbing formula II1/2- 1 III 1-3/4IV and I3/4-1 II 11/4-11/4III1/2-1+IV 1+-3/4V (Fig. 3C-D); (3) granules with black keratinized tips on the belly and flanks (Figure 3A-B); (4) prepollex condition terminating in sharp spine, without keratinized black spines (Figure 3C); (5) pattern of coloration (Figure 2). This identification was performed using the key of the genus Ecnomiohyla given by Batista et al. (2014).
We compare the observed individual with the descriptions of several species of the genus: Duellman (1970), Mendelson et al. (2008), Savage and Kubicki (2010), Batista et al. (2014). This individual differs from the others species of Ecnomiohyla by the following characters (individual characters in parenthesis): E. echinata, E. fimbrimembra, E. minera, E. rabborum, E. salvaje, E. thysanota and E. velancifer lacks cranial and dorsal osteoderms (both present); males of E. bailarina and E. veraguensis present black keratinized spines on the prepolex and thumb (absent); E. sukia present obtuse prepollex with sword-shaped directed laterally bony projection, and heel with scalloped Figure 1. Distribution map of some species of the genus dermal fold (recurved prepollex with spine-shaped bony Ecnomiohyla. E. sukia, black triangles (Savage & Kubicki, 2010; Batista et al., 2014); E. veraguensis, blue star (Batista et projection, heel with several pointy tubercles); in E. al., 2014); E. bailarina, yellow star (Batista et al., 2014; phantasmagoria the finger webbing don’t reach the base Kubicki & Salazar, 2015); E. phantasmagoria, blue square of any digit (the webbing reach the base of the digits), (Dunn, 1943; Ortega-Andrade et al. 2010); E. miliaria, green that is the only diagnostic character used to distinguish dots correspond to the historical records (Savage, 2002; McCranie et al., 2003; Savage & Kubicki, 2010; Köhler, 2011; Batista et al., 2014), and the red dot is the new record for Colombia.
species, therefore possibly representing unrecognized species of this genus. Herein, we present the first record of E. miliaria and the third species of the genus Ecnomiohyla for Colombia, based on a photographic record, extending 660 km (airline) from the southern record in Chagres National Park, Cerro Brewster Stream, Panamá (9.319850N, -79.288900W; 818 m) (Batista et al., 2014) to the Colombia pacific lowland in the locality El Salto Figure 2. Adult male of Ecnomiohyla miliaria, found in the (3.854778N, -76.781858W; 750 m), municipality of municipality of Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca department (Figure 1). Photo by Alejandro Valencia-Z. Geographic extension of Ecnomiohyla milaria for Colombia 25
Figure 3. Characters of the adult male of Ecnomiohyla miliaria. (A-B) ventral view of the condition of the belly and flanks, respectively; (C) ventral view of the hand and prepolex condition; (D) ventral view of the foot; (E) ventral view of the cloacal region; (F) dorsal view of thigh and tubercles of the heel.
both species because Dunn’s (1943) description of E. distribution is fragmented and the populations could phantasmagoria was based in one individual. However, decline by the reduction of the extent and quality of the we suppose that the population along the pacific lowland forest (Solis et al., 2014). Actually, the use of photography of Colombia and Ecuador could correspond to new for description of morphological characters (Ron et al., taxonomic identity of this genus, until future taxonomic 2015) and identification of new distribution records and phylogenetic analysis. (Gomes-Hoyos et al., 2015), are beginning to be used Ecnomiohyla miliaria actually is classified as more often. We consider that the photographic records Vulnerable in the IUCN Red list, because their is an alternative method only for the documentation of 26 Alejandro Valencia-Zuleta et al. the species distribution, due to population declines of record of the bush anole for the Gorgona Island National Natural many species (Minteer et al., 2014) and the difficulty Park, Colombia. Herpetology Notes 8: 297-301. for accessing to collecting permits. A good set of Köhler, G. 2011. Amphibians of Central America. Offenbach, Germany: Herpeton photos should be provided, especially of the diagnostic Kubicki, B., Salazar, S. (2015): Discovery of the Golden-eyed characters used in the identification of a particular taxa; Fringe-limbed Treefrog, Ecnomiohyla bailarina (Anura: and the support from other researchers working on the Hylidae), in the Caribbean foothills of southeastern Costa Rica. taxonomy of the groups is also needed. 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