32 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 57( 1 ) March 2000 Case 3134 Rana cryptotis Boulenger, 1907 (currently Tomopterna cryptotis; Amphibia, Anura): proposed precedence of the specific name over that of Chiromantis kachowskii Nikolsky, 1900 Malcolm J. Largen Liverpool Museum. lVillia?n Brown Street. Liverpool L3 SEN. U. K. (e-mail:
[email protected]) Leo J. Borkin Zoological Institute. Russian Academy oj Sciences, 199034 St Petersburg, Russia (e-mail: borkin(gspas. spb.su) Abstract. The purpose of this application is to conserve the specific name of Tomopterna cryptotis (Boulenger, 1907) for a very common and widespread species of burrowing or sand frog (family ranidae) from much of sub-Saharan Africa. It is proposed that the name be given conditional precedence over the little used Chiromantis kachowskii Nikolsky, 1900. Keywords. Nomenclature; taxonomy; Amphibia; Anura; ranidae; burrowing frogs; sand frogs; Africa; Chiromantis kaclumskii; Tomopterna cryptotis. 1. Nikolsky (1900, p. 246) described Chiromantis kachowskii (by implication a species in the family rhacophoridae) based upon two specimens obtained on 21 July 1898 at Ferad in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia, at approximately 10° 49' N, 42° 42' E). These had been donated by the collector, G.V. Kakhovsky, to the Zoological Museum (now the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in St Petersburg and given the accession number 2077. 2. We have recently examined specimens labelled ZISP 2077.1-2 and found them to be representatives of a taxon that, for at least the past 20 years, has been called Tomopterna cryptotis (family ranidae), a species erected by Boulenger ( 1907, p. 109) for material collected in Angola and originally named Rana cryptotis. Syntypes of this species are in the amphibian collections of the Natural History Museum, London. 3. Nikolsky's (1900) account of Chiromantis kachowskii includes phrases that accurately describe the coloration and 'tuberculo metatarsali interno magno, scaphoideo' of his supposed syntypes, especially ZISP 2077.1, along with obser-vations that are clearly at variance with other features exhibited by this material. In particular, both specimens lack "digitis plantarum longis, fere per totam longitudinem palmatis, discis terminalibus digitorum minimis, vel indistinctis". Do these discrep-ancies indicate that the specimens now labelled ZISP 2077 are not those which carried this number at the time when Nikolsky described the type material of Chiromantis kachow.skii'] After finding no evidence in either the St Petersburg archives or
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