Hyperolius nitidulus Peters, 1875

Channing, Alan, 2022, Colour patterns to sequences: a perspective on the systematics of the Hyperolius viridiflavus group (Anura: Hyperoliidae) using mitochondrial DNA, Zootaxa 5134 (3), pp. 301-354 : 334-335

Hyperolius nitidulus Peters, 1875

Hyperolius nitidulus Peters, 1875 . ZMB 7729 , Lagos, Nigeria. Colour in alcohol: Above violet-grey, a dark brown stripe from the nostrils, over the eye, to the flank, where it becomes many flecks against a pale background. Below this band, white with many small black flecks.

Hyperolius pallidus Mertens, 1940 . NHMW 16862, “Poli bei Garua, Nordkamerun” (Poli near Garua, Cameroon). Synonymy by Rödel (2000). Above pale grey with fine black speckling on the head and sides of females. Juveniles uniform pale, or with two to four pale longitudinal stripes.

Hyperolius viridiflavus angeli Laurent, 1951 . MNHNP 1921.34b, “Gribingui, Oubang-Chari” Central African Republic. The H. viridiflavus clade does not extend far west into the Central African Republic, and the type is here assigned to H. nitidulus . Dorsal colour uniform, with fine black speckling on side of head, tibia and lower leg, which may not be visible in some specimens.

Hyperolius nitidulus aureus Perret, 1966 . MHNG 1038.39 “Ngaoundér”, Cameroon. Golden-yellow above, with a dark brown stripe from the side of the snout over the eye to the vent with a black border, and a similar dark line along the tibia. Table 3 lists the localities of the synonyms.

Sequences were available from Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Ghana, and Cameroon ( Fig. 8A ). The minimum uncorrected p- distances from other clades were 3.3–7.2% ( Table 2 ). Hyperolius nitidulus bangwae Perret, 1966 was removed from the synonymy of H. nitidulus and elevated to a full species. Rödel et al. (2010) showed that H. nitidulus was genetically different from H. spatzi , and confirmed its status, following earlier proposals (Wieczorek et al. 2001, Schiøtz 1967, Drewes 1984, and Rödel 2000). The 16S rRNA sequences from Rödel et al. (2010) were used to identify this clade. The localities of taxa regarded as junior synonyms of H. nitidulus are listed in Table 8. The type locality of Hyperolius nitidulus Peters, 1875 is Lagos, Nigeria. Although there were no sequences available from Lagos or anywhere else in Nigeria, this clade consists of sequences that were identified in the field as H. nitidulus or H. viridiflavus nitidulus , and that occurs west and east of Nigeria. Only two clades ( H. nitidulus and H. spatzi ) are known from West Africa.

Portik et al. (2019) recognised two sub-groups, one in Cameroon and the other in Ghana. Although the Cameroon sample is monophyletic, and has about a 2% difference from the Ghana samples, it is not reciprocally monophyletic from the samples from Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.

The most common pattern elements in the descriptions of the types included in H. nitidulus are a dark lateral band (50%), and a uniform back (50%). The percentages are not additive, as the pattern elements may be shared.

The advertisement call (no voucher) is described as ‘a single, pure, metallic and very loud tone’. Mean call length is 0.08 s, at a mean frequency of 2638 Hz ( Rödel et al. 2010).

Figures

FIGURE 8. Localities of sequences (black circles), type localities (stars) and location of junior synonyms of Hyperolius nitidulus (A), H. mariae (B) and H. sp 1 (C). Locality codes are explained in Table 3.