PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 112(l):19-39. 1999. A new genus and species of frog from Bahia, Brazil (Amphibia: Anura: Leptodactylidae) with comments on the zoogeography of the Brazilian campos rupestres W. Ronald Heyer Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560-0109, U.S.A. Abstract. — A new genus and species of frog, Rupirana cardosoi, is described from the northern Espinhago Range in the State of Bahia, Brazil. The new genus shares most character states with the genus Thoropa, but cladistic anal-ysis of morphological data indicates that most of these shared features are primitive states. The cladistic analysis indicates that Rupirana and Thoropa do not have a close sister-group relationship with each other. Rupirana cardosoi is another addition to the many species endemic to the campos rupestres of the Espinha90 Range. The amphibians of the campos rupestres show a much stron-ger biogeographical affinity with the Atlantic Forest biota than other groups studied; these other groups show a much stronger affinity with the biota of the diagonal of open formations running from northeast Brazil (caatingas-cerrados) to Argentina and Paraguay (Gran Chaco). Several years ago, Dr. Miguel T. Ro-drigues brought my attention to a series of unusual frogs he had collected at two lo-calities in the State of Bahia, Brazil, asking me if I knew what they were. I did not. Drs. Rodrigues and R E. Vanzolini kindly put the specimens at my disposal for further study, but for various reasons, detailed study was delayed. Shortly after I had ex-amined aspects of the myology and skele-ton of the taxon, I had occasion to evaluate some of the problematical specimens of the Werner C. A. Bokermann collection as they were being catalogued into the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de Sao Paulo col-lection. I found a series of the same taxon from a third locality in Bahia. All known localities are in the distinctive campos ru-pestres formation of Brazil. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the new frog differs from all other known leptodac-tylid genera, provide a description for it, and briefly comment on its relationships and zoogeography. Methods and Materials One male (MZUSP 65204) was superfi-cially dissected to obtain myological infor-mation on jaw, hyoid, and thigh muscula-ture for the characters used in a previous study of leptodactylid relationships (Heyer 1975). A second female specimen (MZUSP 68959) was cleared-and-stained using the double-staining technique for cartilage and bone (Dingerkus & Uhler 1977) to evaluate osteological features. For the species description, measurement data were taken with a dial calipers to the nearest 0.1 mm following the definitions in Heyer et al. (1990). Relationships were analyzed with PAUP 3.1 (Swofford 1993). Comparison with Leptodactylid Genera Lynch (1971) still provides the most complete data set for leptodactylid genera, providing a baseline for comparison with subsequent studies. He recognized four New World subfamilies of the family Lep-
A New Genus And Species Of Frog From Bahia, Brazil (Amphibia : Anura : Leptodactylidae) With Comments On The Zoogeography Of The Brazilian Campos Rupestres
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