Conraua

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Conraua
Goliath frog skeleton (Conraua goliath)

Goliath frog skeleton ( Conraua goliath )

Systematics
Row : Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
without rank: Amphibians (Lissamphibia)
Order : Frog (anura)
Subordination : Neobatrachia
Family : Conrauidae
Genre : Conraua
Scientific name of the  family
Conrauidae
Dubois , 1992
Scientific name of the  genus
Conraua
Nieden , 1908

Conraua is a genus of the frogs . In the past it was assigned to the family of the real frogs (Ranidae), today it is the only genus of the family Conrauidae . The frogs are in Africa of the south Sahara widespread.

description

The frogs of the genus Conraua can become very large and heavy. The goliath frog ( Conraua goliath ) reaches a head-trunk length of 30 to 40 centimeters and a weight of more than 3 kilograms. He is considered the largest frog on earth. The body is broad and flattened when viewed from above. The hind legs are much longer than the front limbs. Between the fingers and toes, there webbed . The lateral line is lost in adults . The omosternum, the front part of the sternum, is forked. The nasalia are large and touch each other.

The frogs develop through metamorphosis from free-living larvae ( tadpoles ), which prefer fast flowing waters.

distribution

The genus is native to south of the Sahara in tropical West Africa as well as in Ethiopia and Eritrea .

Way of life

The larvae of the genus Conraua go through a tadpole stage in the oxygen-rich upper reaches of rivers and streams, where they feed on certain plants. The females lay more than 100 eggs per clutch on plants at the bottom of the rivers.

Taxonomy and systematics

The genus Conraua was first described by Fritz Nieden in 1908 . For a long time it was classified in the family of real frogs (Ranidae). Alain Dubois was the first to set up a separate tribe for this genus within the Ranidae , the Conrauini. He raised this to the subfamily Conrauinae in 2005. In 2006 most of the 14 subfamilies established by Dubois within the Ranidae were spun off as separate families. However, the Conrauinae have been identified by Frost et al. initially together with the closely related Petropedetinae and the Ranixalinae native to India in a single family, which was named Petropedetidae . The Ranixalinae soon received the rank of family as Ranixalidae . Because of the relationship between the genus Conraua and the other genera of the Petropedetidae, as well as the considerable differences between the two subfamilies, the Conrauinae were recognized by Pyron and Vienna in 2011 as a separate family. It includes the genus Conraua with 6 species:

literature

  • Fritz Nieden: The amphibian fauna of Cameroon. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Zoologischer Museum in Berlin , Jg. 3 (1908), pp. 491-518, (first description of the genus) online
  • Alain Dubois: Notes on the classification of Ranidae (Amphibians anoures). In: Bulletin Mensuel de la Société Linnéenne de Lyon , Vol. 61 (1992), pp. 305–352, ISSN  0366-1326 (first description as a higher taxon)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Darrel R. Frost, Taran Grant, Julián Faivovich, Raoul H. Bain, Alexander Haas, Celio FB Haddad, Rafael O. de Sá, A. Channing, Mark Wilkinson, Stephen C. Donnellan, Christopher J. Raxworthy, Jonathan A. Campbell, Boris L. Blotto, Paul E. Moler, Robert C. Drewes, Ronald A. Nussbaum, John D. Lynch, David M. Green, and Ward C. Wheeler: The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297, pp. 1-370, 2006 full text
  2. ↑ a b Darrel R. Frost: Conraua Nieden, 1908 . Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference, Version 6.0, American Museum of Natural History, 2014 (accessed February 25, 2014)
  3. ↑ A. Dubois: Notes on the classification of Ranidae (Amphibiens anoures). Bulletin Mensuel de la Société Linnéenne de Lyon, 61, pp. 305-352, 1992
  4. ^ A. Dubois: Amphibia Mundi. 1.1. An ergotaxonomy of recent amphibians. Alytes, 23, 1-2, pp. 1-24, 2005
  5. ^ RA Pyron & JJ Wiens: A large-scale phylogeny of Amphibia including over 2800 species, and a revised classification of advanced frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 61, pp. 543-583, 2011

Web links

Commons : Conraua  - collection of images, videos and audio files