New County Records and Other Data Since 1996
Rana utricularia Harlan - Southern Leopard Frog
Since publication of Atlas of Amphibians in Tennessee (Redmond, W. H. and A. F. Scott. 1996. The Center for Field Biology, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN. 94 pp.), several applicable taxonomic and nomenclatural changes and numerous reports of new county records have appeared in the literature. Comments, accompanied by cited references, on the taxonomic and nomenclatural changes plus bibliographical information on new county records as they pertain to R. utricularia follow:
Taxonomic and Nomenclatural Changes
Based on a move to suppress in favor of priority by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (Opinion, 1685, 1992, Bull. Zool. Nomenclature, 49:171-173), Crother (2000) listed the binominal of this species as R. sphenocephala, thus negating the former name R. uticularia. Subsequent to this change, the genus Rana was split by Frost et al. (2006, The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 297:1-370), and all eastern North American ranid species placed in the genus Lithobates. In the latest list of scientific and standard English names of the frogs of North America north of Mexico (Frost et al. 2008), the binomial for the Southern Leopard Frog is given as Lithobates sphenocephalus.
Literature Cited:
Crother, B. I. 2000. Scientific and Standard English Names of Amphibians and Reptiles of North American North of Mexico, PP 1-82. SSAR Herpetological Circular 29.
Frost, D. R., R. W. McDiarmid, and J. R. Mendelson III. 2008. Anura: Frogs. IN B. I. Crother (ed.), Scientific and Standard English Names of Amphibians and Reptiles of North American North of Mexico, pp. 2-12. SSAR Herpetological Circular 37.
New County Records
Bibliographical information on reports of new Tennessee county records of L. sphenocephalus appearing since 1996 are listed below by counties, which are arranged alphabetically.
Gibson County
Hall, J. M. 2008.
Geographic distribution.
Lithobates sphenocephalus. Herpetol. Rev. 39:479.
Houston County
Scott, A. F., S. Sutton, and S. Williamson. 2000. New county records of amphibians and turtles from the Western Highland Rim of central Tennessee. Herpetol. Rev. 31:117-118.
Lawrence County
Messer, H.A. and B.P. Butterfield. 2007. New records for anurans from Lawrence County, Tennessee. Herpetol. Rev. 38:245.
Lewis and Marion counties
Davenport, J. M., J. R. Ennen, and A. F. Scott. 2005. New records for amphibians from counties in south-central Tennessee. Herpetol. Rev. 36:209-210.
Moore County
Niemiller, M.L., B.M. Glorioso, G.R. Wyckoff, III, and J.K. Spiess. 2007. New county records for amphibians in Middle Tennessee. Herpetol. Rev. 38:234.
Trousdale County
Glorioso, B.M. and J. Pruett. 2007. New records for amphibians and reptiles from Trousdale County, Tennessee. Herpetol. Rev. 38: 247-248