Hymenochirus boulengeri vs Hymenochirus boettgeri

[Alexis]

Two questions:


1) What's the difference between Hymenochirus boulengeri and Hymenochirus boettgeri?
2) May I have both species in the same tank?


Thank you very much.
Alexis

 

[Jake]

Moved from Newt and Salamander Help section.

 

[martintruckenbrodt]

Hello,
perhaps you can translate this information with a online translation service. http://www.pipidae.de/arten_literatur_hymenochirus.php

Or look here: http://www.pddb.org/species.php

The problem is: Who can determine the species correctly?
At least you have to know the location there they frogs have been collected.

Bye Martin

 

[merk199]

I am in the same boat regarding the Hymenochirus boulengeri and Hymenochirus boettgeri. I have what was sold to me boulengeri but after staring at pictures they look like hybrids of each other. Upon further research appears a lot of the stock in the US is hybridized between the two species. The only way to know what they truly are is through site collection data, reputable collector/dealer. While similiar in look there is a definite pattern difference on the back. But whether or not you can look close enough in a retail setting is another story.

Personally I would like to add more frogs to the tank but until I can have someone nail down an ID I am just going to treat them as hybrids to be kept seperate.

 

[martintruckenbrodt]

Hello,
doesn't anybody know where these frogs come from? Are they directly form Africa? Or are they bred frogs?
Bye Martin

 

[froggy]

I believe a lot of the petshop Hymenochirus are farmed in India, or at least were...

 

[FrogEyes]

There's a great little Aqualog book on pipids which includes a key to all known species of the family [as of when the book was published]. I'm not going back out in the snow to get it out of the van, but off the top of my head, one of the distinguishing features of H.boettgeri is lateral granules which are distinctly enlarged relative to the dorsal ones. H.curtipes lacks that distinction. Those are the species you are more likely to see, but all I seen in years is H.boettgeri.

 

[Opacum]

"For the genus Hymenochirus currently three species with three subspecies are known. Hymenochirus feae is of PERRET & MERTENS 1958 boettgeri classified as another subspecies of H.. DE WITTE H. boulengeri 1930, on the basis of leg length between H. and H. boettgeri curtipes. H. boettgeri feae and H. boulengeri been from their first description in the relevant articles described only very briefly. Color photographs can be found in any of the five descriptions. From H. boulengeri not even a black and white drawing. I admit, to avoid confusion, the descriptions of the species only data from the first descriptions and additionally only by DE WITTE again in 1930 because he had the first of comparison of living specimens of three different species. Sometimes I have left out features that are not necessary for species differentiation. Common features, see the determination of the species. It should be mentioned that, after in the 50's and 60's that began regular importation of African dwarf frogs in the pet trade, in many later publications often wrong species and subspecies have been identified, see KUNZ 2000 in print. The German names of species are generally very, very rarely used, for example, at HERRMANN 1994th"
Here was the Google translation for Martin's first link. From what I've Googled, it seems that boulengeri is much more uncommon. Even the IUCN has very little data on the species.

 

[martintruckenbrodt]

Hello,
my first after more than nine months on caudata.org.
Some facts:
More one 100 years ago (Tornier) scientists have had very much lower standards for the description of new species. I will say that this standards increased not before the second half of the last century.
Hymenochirus are not very much in herpetoligists focus.
The congo bassin for a very long timespan has been very dangerous for scientists and hobbyists. Too much of war and bad things. So wild Hymenochirus only are coming to Europe form Cameroon or Nigeria. In Nigeria by now not any location of Hymenochiurs. So perhpas these frogs are coming from Cameroon via Lagos/Nigeria. Cameroon is H. boettgeri area. The congo bassin is the Hymenochirus species hotspot. So we would need frogs from this area.
Hymenochirus are frogs. But the are kept like fish. But nobody tells the fishing men to look for these darkish brown frogs, too. The fishing men are thinking Europeans are only looking for nice looking and well coloured species or animals.
In the last 50 years it seems that there have not been more than 10 new collections of Hymenochirus. Only two or three of these collections have been done by people whom are interested a little bit more in these frogs. There are at least two collections done by killi fish enthusiats. They just noticed that have been Hymenochirus frogs in the pond or the river. No frog has been collected.

This is the situation we have to live with.

Bye Martin
P.S. Please excuse my bad English.

 

[FrogEyes]

And in light of a lack of recent field or genetic research on this group, it's quite possible that exports from the wild represent undescribed species as well.