Crinia

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Crinia
Common Eastern Froglet (Crinia signifera)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Family: Myobatrachidae
Genus: Crinia
Tschudi, 1838
Species

See text

Crinia is a genus of frog, native to Australia, and part of the family Myobatrachidae. It consists of small frogs, which are distributed throughout most of Australia, excluding the central arid regions. Many of the species within this genus are non-distinguishable through physical characteristics, and can only be distinguished by their calls.

They have unwebbed toes and fingers, most of the species in these genus are polymorphic - meaning that several variations of colour and skin patterning exist in a single population and all species lay their eggs in small clumps in water.

The generic name Crinia likely derives from the Greek verb κρῑνω (krīnō) "to separate" as a reference to the frog’s unwebbed digits, meaning "separated (toes)." Although Johann Jakob von Tschudi did not provide an etymology in 1838, he cited the frog's "free toes" (without webbing) as an important distinctive feature (most frogs have webbed feet).

During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s a lot of taxonomic work was done on this genus, frogs that were originally thought to be Common Eastern Froglets (Crinia signifera) were described as other species of Crinia by mating call analysis and hybridization experiments. Two species originally described as Crinia were then placed in their own genus, Assa and Paracrinia. One species of both Geocrinia and Taudactylus were split from Crinia and the genus Bryobatrachus was also described only to be recently placed back into Crinia. The Moss Froglet, (Crinia nimbus) is very different physically and in its tadpole development. Due to the obvious differences with other species in Crinia this species is likely to be placed again into a separate genus.

Species

The Crinia genus contains 17 species:[1]

Common nameBinomial name
Bilingual frogCrinia bilingua (Martin, Tyler, and Davies, 1980)
Desert frogletCrinia deserticola (Liem and Ingram, 1977)
Kimberley frogletCrinia fimbriata Doughty, Anstis, and Price, 2009
Southern Flinders Ranges frogletCrinia flindersensis Donnellan, Anstis, Price, and Wheaton, 2012
Quacking frogCrinia georgiana (Tschudi, 1838)
Glauert's frogletCrinia glauerti (Loveridge, 1933)
Sign-bearing frogletCrinia insignifera (Moore, 1954)
Moss FrogletCrinia nimbus (Rounsevell, Ziegeler, Brown, Davies, and Littlejohn, 1994)
Eastern sign-bearing frogletCrinia parinsignifera (Main, 1957)
False western frogletCrinia pseudinsignifera (Main, 1957)
Remote frogletCrinia remota (Tyler and Parker, 1974)
Streambank frogletCrinia riparia (Littlejohn and Martin, 1965)
Common eastern frogletCrinia signifera (Girard, 1853)
Sloane's frogletCrinia sloanei (Littlejohn, 1958)
Small western frogletCrinia subinsignifera (Littlejohn, 1957)
Tasmanian frogletCrinia tasmaniensis (Günther, 1864)
Wallum frogletCrinia tinnula (Straughan and Main, 1966)

References

  1. Frost, Darrel R. (2013). "Crinia Tschudi, 1838". Amphibian Species of the World 5.6, an Online Reference. American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 4 April 2013. 
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