First record of Foulassi Screeching Frog, Arthroleptis adelphus (Perret, 1966) (Anura, Arthroleptidae, Arthroleptinae), from Nigeria, with notes on its phylogenetic position

Abstract

We report the first known occurrence of the Foulassi Screeching Frog, Arthroleptis adelphus (Perret, 1966), from Nigeria. A specimen of A. adelphus was collected during herpetological survey work conducted in Cross River National Park, south-eastern Nigeria. Morphometrics and mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene confirm identity of the specimen. Matrilineal genealogy reveals a sister relationship of A. adelphus from Nigeria with individuals from south-western Cameroon. Genetic analysis further shows geographic structuring and divergence among populations of A. adelphus from the Guineo-Congolian forest region. We offer updates to the IUCN geographic range of A. adelphus.

Amphibian assemblages and diversity patterns in two forest ecosystems of South‐Eastern Nigeria

“…Few works and contributions to the understanding of Nigerian amphibians date back to the early 1960s (Nneji et al., 2019a and references therein). Despite the reported high diversity of amphibians in Nigeria compared with other West and Central African countries, recent herpetological expeditions still uncover several new species (Blackburn, 2010; Blackburn & Rödel, 2011; Rödel, Onadeko, Barej, & Sandberger, 2012) and first country records (Nneji et al., 2019a; Nneji et al., 2019c). This implies that the amphibian diversity of Nigeria is still vastly underestimated.…”