Publication details
A new diagnostic character to distinguish the Epirus Waterfrog, Pelophylax epeiroticus (Schneider, Sofianidou & Kyriakopoulou-Sklavounou, 1984), from the syntopic Balkan Frog, Pelophylax ridibundus kurtmuelleri (Gayda, 1940)
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Herpetology Notes |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://www.biotaxa.org/hn |
| Keywords | Balkan Peninsula; diagnostic character; frogs; identification; morphology; pupil; species determination |
| Description | The Epirus Waterfrog, Pelophylax epeiroticus (Schneider, Sofianidou & Kyriakopoulou-Sklavounou, 1984) is a medium-sized aquatic frog belonging to the family Ranidae (Plötner, 2005). It is mainly associated with freshwater habitats with rich shore vegetation, including canals, slow-flowing rivers and marshes, from sea level up to 500 m elevation (Sofianidou and Schneider, 1989; Schneider and Haxhiu, 1992). The natural range of the Epirus Waterfrog is restricted to the area between the Pindos Mountains and the Ionian coast, from south-western Albania to the western Peloponnese in Greece, and on the island of Corfu (Oruçi, 2008; Jablonski, 2011; Szabolcs et al., 2017; Dufresnes, 2019; Papežík et al., 2023). A probably introduced population was recently discovered east of the Pindos Mountain Range, between the cities of Larisa and Trikala, in Thessaly (Strachinis, 2021). |