Cochranella granulosa in Colombia and Ecuador

ANARTIA

Publicación del Museo de Biología de la Universidad del Zulia

ISSN 1315-642X (impresa) / ISSN 2665-0347 (digital)

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7951625 / Anartia, 35 (diciembre 2022): 33-38

Extension of the distribution of Cochranella granulosa

(Taylor, 1949) in Colombia and Ecuador

Ampliación de la distribución de Cochranella granulosa (Taylor, 1949)

en Colombia y Ecuador

César L. Barrio-Amorós

, Andrés Mauricio Forero-Cano

, Felipe Reyes Serna

Raúl Nieto

& Corentin Rombeaut

Doc Frog Expeditions/ CRWild, Uvita, Puntarenas, Costa Rica.

Proyecto Naturphilosophie-Conocer para Conservar, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Nuquí Herping, Colombia.

Proyecto Itapoa, Malecón Julio Izurieta sin número y Abdon Calceron, Puerto López, Manabí, Ecuador.

Proyecto Sacha-Runas - Reserva Natural Donde se Oculta el Sol, Putumayo, Colombia.

Autor para la correspondencia: cbarrioamoros@crwild.com

(Recibido: 15-12-2022 / Aceptado: 30-12-2022 / En línea: 19-05-2023)

NEW RECORDS

Colombia: the new Colombian record is from Jurubira,

Nuquí, Chocó Department (5.851196N, -77.278915W;

6 m elev). It was observed and photographed (University

of Texas at Arlington Digital Collection UTADC 9853;

Fig.1A) by FRS on December 14, 2022, at around 20.00h

under drizzling rain. is and other individuals were call-

ing at around 2-3 meters over ground along a little creek

close to the village of Jurubira. is is the second report

of the species in Colombia aer the one recorded close

to the Panamanian border (Díaz-Ricaurte & Guevara-

Molina 2020), lling a gap of more than 1,038 km from

the previously known Colombian locality to the south-

ernmost locality known in Ecuador. e new Colombian

locality is 273 km South-southwest from previous re-

cords (Díaz-Ricaurte & Guevara-Molina 2020) and 550

km North-northwest from the Ecuadorian northernmost

locality (Guayasamín et al. 2020). Two recent records in

iNaturalist, clearly correspond to this species. e rst

is an observation by Alejandro Jaramillo at Acandí, Ca-

purgana, Chocó Department; https://www.gbif.org/oc-

currence/3925025463) on April 13, 2022 (8.370089N,

-77.127546W). A photo of the individual is online:

Cochranella granulosa was described by Taylor (1949)

from “Los Diamantes, one mile south of Guápiles, Costa

Rica”, on the Caribbean versant of the Talamanca range

of Central America. e species is well distributed from

southern Honduras throughout scattered localities in Ni-

caragua, and on both versants of Costa Rica towards Pana-

ma (Köhler 2010). Recently the species has been reported

from a single locality in Colombia, very close to the Pana-

manian border (Díaz-Ricaurte & Guevara-Molina 2020).

From there, there is an apparent hiatus until Ecuador,

where the species was reported also recently from a single

locality in Jardín de los Sueños, Cotopaxi Province, the

southernmost locality recorded for the species (Culebras

et al. 2020). Guayasamín et al. (2020) reported a further

locality from Ecuador, 4 km West of Río Durango, 232 m

in elevation, in Esmeraldas Province (Museo de Zoología,

Ponticia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, uito, Ecua-

dor: QCAZ 32769). Herein we report a second locality

based on photographic evidence from Colombia, plus two

other photographic registers from iNaturalist, and a third

individual of the species for Ecuador. In addition, photo-

graphic documentation of an uncollected individual oers

us the possibility to build a distribution map of the species

and comment upon phenotypic variation.

C. L. Barrio-Amorós, A. M. Forero-Cano, F. Reyes Serna, R. Nieto & C. Rombeaut

https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/192984802. An-

other observation in the same platform by Marco Rada

occurred nearby, at the foothills of Cerro Tacarcuna, co-

munidad Eyakera, corregimiento de Bilbao, municipio de

Unguia, Chocó, 200 m (https://colombia.inaturalist.org/

observations/39731) observed on November 18, 2011

(8.190422N, -77.194061W).

Ecuador: Our new locality is the third report from Ec-

uador, from Reserva Itapoa, Parroquia Telembí, Cantón

Eloy Alfaro (0.511944N, -79.134206W; 432 m asl), Es-

meraldas Province (UTADC 9742; Figs. 1B, 2), 78 km

SW from the closest report at Río Durango (Guayasamín

et al. 2020), on December 2, 2021. e female found at

night (around 20.00h), was on a vertical trunk of a little

tree on a creek shore, immobile, around 2 m above ground.

DISTRIBUTION

We report Cochranella granulosa as present from Hon-

duras to NW Ecuador in a patchy distribution (Fig. 3). In

Honduras it is present in the SE (Departments Olancho

and Gracias a Dios) in an isolated patch contiguous to Ni-

caragua at Jinotega and Matagalpa (McCranie & Wilson

2002, Köhler 2011, HerpetoNica 2015, Fig. 4A, B), where

it disappears almost entirely with some recent sightings at

Chontales (Sunyer et al. 2014). In Costa Rica, this spe-

cies is widely distributed across the country, except in the

highlands (above 1,500 m) and the dry forest of Guana-

caste (Savage 2002), present at both versants, the Atlantic

(Fig.4C) and the Pacic (Fig. 4D). In Panama, it is also

well distributed along the country except on the highlands

above 1,500 m and the arid Península de Azuero (Köhler

2011) (Fig. 4E, F). In Colombia (Díaz-Ricaurte & Gue-

vara-Molina 2020), including our three new reports of this

note, there are only four localities in total, three adjacent

to the Panamanian border, and one in the central Chocoan

rainforest at Nuquí. From there to the closest reported lo-

cality in Ecuador there are 553 km without any reports

so far. In Ecuador, the three localities lie in the remnant

Chocoan rainforest in the NW of the country (Culebras

et al. 2020, Guayasamín et al. 2020, this work).

PHENOTYPES

At rst glance, the coloration and pattern of the Cen-

tral American and Colombian populations diverge from

the two only photographed animals from Ecuador, MZU-

TI 4811 (Museo de Zoología, Universidad Tecnológica

Indoamérica, uito, Ecuador; Culebras et al. 2020) and

the one reported herein (UTADC 9742; Fig.1B, 2). Ani-

mals from Honduras to the Colombian Chocó look very

similar in pattern and size, being small to medium, males

22.5-29 mm, females 29-32 mm. Dorsal surfaces are dark

to pale green, and some individuals may have a bluish

tonality on the posterior half of the body, including the

hind limbs (Fig. 5A). e granules that cover the total

surface of the body bear pale blue (Fig. 4A, B) to pale

yellow (Fig.4E) chromatophores; many or few dark blue

dorsal spots are oen present, although in some popula-

tions these can be randomly absent, both on males and fe-

Figure 1. A. Cochranella granulosa, male from Jurubira, Nuquí,

Chocó Department, Colombia (UTADC 9853). B. female from

Reserva Itapoa, Parroquia Telembí, Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Photo-

graphs: Felipe Reyes Serna (A), César L. Barrio-Amorós (B).

Cochranella granulosa in Colombia and Ecuador

males (Fig. 4D, 5B). Color of the disk ngers and toes can

be bluish green to yellow, while irises can be gray, brown,

orange or yellow.

On the other hand, a single Ecuadorian female of Co-

chranella granulosa was bigger than any other female seen

so far in Costa Rica or Panama, measuring 35 mm. e

range size reported by Savage (2002) and Leenders (2016)

for Costa Rica is smaller, with females reaching up to 32

mm. Both male (MZUTI-4811) and female (UTADC

9742) are lime green without any trace of blue, lacking any

dorsal spotting, bearing yellowish granules, yellow iris and

much wider disks than Central American and Colombian

populations. Despite the very limited sample studied, at

rst glance, the foot webbing is more extensive in the Ec-

uadorian individuals (Fig. 2 bottom right, Guayasamín et

al. 2020: g 67 bottom right).

DISCUSSION

e distribution of Cochranella granulosa is not well

understood yet. e species is missing from most of Hon-

duras and Nicaragua, abundant in Costa Rica and Pana-

ma, but very scarce in Colombia and Ecuador, west of the

Andes. is could probably be a resulting eect of the

diculty of direct sightings because it is mostly a canopy

species. However, the species has a unique call pattern that

makes it easy to distinguish from other frogs. Most reports

from Costa Rica come from audible transects.

e external dierences shown by the northern (Cen-

tral American and Colombian) and southern (Ecuador-

ian) populations possibly suggest a genetic dierentiation

that is further supported by the fact that both probably

separated 4 M years ago (Guayasamín et al. 2020). Never-

Figure 2. Cochranella granulosa. Same individual of UTADC 9853, showing lateral (top le), frontal (right le), dorsal (bottom le)

and ventral (bottom right) views. Photographs: A. M. Forero-Cano.

C. L. Barrio-Amorós, A. M. Forero-Cano, F. Reyes Serna, R. Nieto & C. Rombeaut

theless, the size of the sample and the lack of DNA studies

do not allow at this time to determine whether speciation

took place.

Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that the

Mira River Valley, located between Colombia and Ecua-

dor, has been identied by several authors as an impor-

tant biogeographic barrier for small vertebrates, which

facilitates the isolation and diversication of lineages

(Arteaga et al. 2016, Yánez-Muñoz et al. 2018, 2021,

Brito et al. 2020, Reyes-Puig et al. 2020). According to

Yánez-Muñoz et al. (2021), the biodiversity patterns and

species composition from north of the Mira River are in-

uenced by mountain ridges of Cerro Golondrinas, an

ancient geological formation between the San Juan and

Mira rivers, which acts as an important biogeographical

barrier. is mountainous barrier as well as the deep can-

yon formed by the Mira river, promoted conditions for

the isolation and speciation of species with low vagility

in southwestern Colombia and northwestern Ecuador.

Although much remains to be studied, we could hy-

pothesize that the southern morphotype of Cochranella

granulosa could only be found in the southern region of

the Mira river, between Colombia and Ecuador. A larger

survey of this species on that region could give a better

understanding of how the geography might have inu-

enced biological processes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank several friends and colleagues who facilitated

data and/or photographs to illustrate this article. Gerardo

Chaves “Cachí” shared data from Universidad de Costa

Figure 3. Distribution map of Cochranella granulosa in Northwestern South America and Central America. Map generated by A. M.

Forero-Cano with QGIS 3.22.6 using Catalogue numbers from UCR. Literature and novel records by A. Batista and M. Ponce.

Cochranella granulosa in Colombia and Ecuador

Figure 4. Cochranella granulosa from dierent localities. A. male from Bosawas, Jinotega, Nicaragua; B. female from Cerro Musún,

Matagalpa, Nicaragua; C. male from Matina, Limón, Costa Rica; D. male from Ojochal, Puntarenas, Costa Rica; E. female from

Changuinola, Bocas del Toro, Panama; F. male from Changuinola, Bocas del Toro, Panama. Photographs: Javier Sunyer (A, B) César L.

Barrio-Amorós (C, D), Marcos Ponce (E, F).

C. L. Barrio-Amorós, A. M. Forero-Cano, F. Reyes Serna, R. Nieto & C. Rombeaut

Rica; Josué Ramos Gadamez shared personal data of the

species in Honduras. Jose Vieira oered data of the spe-

cies in Colombia and Ecuador. Javier Sunyer, Abel Batista

and Marcos Ponce shared their photos of the species from

Nicaragua and Panama.

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B.an amplectant pair from Parque Nacional Soberanía, Gam-

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