Marsh Frog

About the Marsh Frog

The marsh frog (Pelophylax ridibundus) is a species of water frog native to Europe and parts of western Asia. The first scientific description of the marsh frog was published in 1771 and written by Prussian zoologist Peter Simon Pallas, who gave it the scientific name Rana ridibunda after collecting specimens of it during an expedition through the Russian Empire. Pallas did not precisely specify the type locality (where he found the frogs), only noting it as "versus mare Caspium; Volgae et Iaico" (opposite to the Caspian Sea, Volga, and on the Yaik River). A more precise location of "Gurjew" on the north coast of the Caspian Sea (now the city of Atyrau in Kazakhstan) was given in a 1928 publication written by German herpetologists Robert Mertens and Lorenz Müller. However, a 1994 paper by herpetologists Alain Dubois and Annemarie Ohler noted that because Pallas never designated a holotype specimen, a neotype needs to be selected for the species. The restriction of the type locality done by Mertens and Müller is therefore invalid unless a specimen from Atyrau is designated as the neotype, which Dubois and Ohler suggest should be done... Wikipedia →