Hyperolius callichromus Ahl, 1931a: 99.

Tillack, Frank, Ruiter, Ronald de & Roedel, Mark-Oliver, 2021, A type catalogue of the reed frogs (Amphibia, Anura, Hyperoliidae) in the collection of the Museum fuer Naturkunde Berlin (ZMB) with comments on historical collectors and expeditions, Zoosystematics and Evolution 97 (2), pp. 407-450 : 407

Hyperolius callichromus Ahl, 1931a: 99.

Holotype.

ZMB 78576, "Westliches Russisi-Ufer und Nordwest-Ufer des Tanganyika" [West Bank of Ruzizi River, Democratic Republic of the Congo], coll. Rudolf Grauer (Fig. 6 ).

Paratypes.

ZMB 78577-78583, same data as for the holotype, ZMB 85841-85844 “Usumbura” [Bujumbura, Bujumbura Mairie Province, Burundi], coll. Rudolf Grauer; ZMB 85854 “Kililana” [opposite of Manda Island, Lamu District, Coast Province, Kenya], coll. Clemens Andreas Denhard; ZMB 86000, “Kawende” [region in south Kigoma and northwest Katawi Division, eastern Tanzania], coll. Robert Reichert; ZMB 85869-85872, “Dar-es-Salaam” [Dar es Salaam, Tanzania], collector unknown.

Present name.

Hyperolius marginatus Peters, 1854.

Remarks.

Drawings illustrating the variation of this taxon are given by Ahl (1931b: 373, fig. 248). Ahl (1931a: 101) mentioned 27 specimens, of which we could not locate the material collected by Schubotz and Paulus in “Bagamojo” and "Zentral Afrika". Two paratypes, MCZ A-17630-17631 from "Westliches Russisi-Ufer und Nordwest-Ufer des Tanganyika", coll. Grauer, were sent in exchange from ZMB in 1932 ( Barbour and Loveridge 1946: 126).

The Austrian hunter and Africa explorer Grauer undertook several expeditions to Eastern Africa, e.g. to British East Africa [Uganda] (February to May 1904 and September to November 1905) and to Tanganyika in 1907, where he met the first "Deutsche Zentral-Afrika-Expedition" at Lake Kivu in August. Upon this meeting he handed the zoological material he had collected in the “Zwischenseengebiet” [Region between Lake Victoria, Lake Kivu and Lake Malawi, Tanzania] for ZMB and the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum (now the Natural History Museum at Tring), to the German expedition. Grauer then turned south, travelled along the west bank of Lake Tanganyika and returned to Europe in early 1909 ( Schubotz 1909, 1912; ÖAW 1959; Riedl-Dorn 2001). In November 1909, he returned to Africa, on behalf of the Natural History Museum Vienna (NMW) and travelled to Lake Victoria and Lake Malawi. From there he turned further north along the African Rift Valley to Beni [North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo], from where he returned to Austria in May 1911. About 250 herpetological objects (mainly reptiles) collected during this expedition are in the collection of NMW, collected mainly in South Kivu, North Kivu and Orientale Province of D. R. Congo (Silke Schweiger in litt. 5 August 2020). The herpetological collections of Grauer’s last expedition were partly described by Steindachner (1911) and Werner (1924). We refer also to Gemel et al. (2019) for information about the type material collected by Grauer and deposited in the NMW collection.

Figures

Figure 6. Holotype of Hyperolius callichromus Ahl, 1931 a, ZMB 78576 from " Westliches Russisi-Ufer ", coll. Grauer.