Figure 1.
Leopard frog distributions in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic US.
Left: currently recognized IUCN (2012) range maps for R. pipiens (green) and R. sphenocephala (red) with areas of potential overlap (hatched). Right: newly interpreted distributions for all three leopard frog species including R. kauffeldi. Symbols indicate known R. kauffeldi populations and purple shading depicts areas where our field work has confirmed the occurrence of R. kauffeldi. Yellow shading indicates areas of less intensive examination and sampling; R. kauffeldi may occur in these areas based on habitat and proximity to known populations. Potential sympatry is also possible in the yellow shaded areas, with R. sphenocephala (from Long Island southward), or R. pipiens (north and west of Long Island). The type locality for R. kauffeldi is indicated by an arrow.
Figure 2.
Photographs of Rana kauffeldi sp. nov. holotype (YPM 13217).
Male frog presented live: (a) whole body, dorsolateral view and (b) dorsal view; and preserved: (c) dorsal view and (d) ventral view. Photographs taken by BRC (a), BZ (b), and GWC (c–d).
Table 1.
Mean morphological parameters for four species of Rana.
Figure 3.
Primary (advertisement) calls of five Rana species from the study region.
Species include R. kauffeldi (column 1), R. sphenocephala (column 2), R. pipiens (column 3), R. palustris (column 4), and R. sylvatica (column 5). Depicted individuals were recorded within 8°C of each other at 10.0, 11.0, 18.0, 15.0, and 10.1°C, respectively. Row 1 shows waveforms of primary call sequences (12 s scale) (note: R. pipiens contains secondary grunts). Rows 2 and 3 show single-call waveforms and spectrograms, respectively (750 ms scale). Row 4 shows power spectra for each single call. Numbers assigned to waveforms in row 1 indicate and identify different individuals. Format adapted from Lemmon et al. [6].
Table 2.
Mean primary (advertisement) call parameters for five species of Rana.
Figure 4.
Examples include (a) dark state, Rana kauffeldi (YPM 14143); (b) light state, R. sphenocephala (YPM 14097); (c) R. kauffeldi yellow variant (YPM 13767); (d) R. kauffeldi green variant (YPM 14025). Photographs taken by E. Kiviat (a), M. Cram (b), and BRC (c, d).