Arthroleptis sp
—
unidentified species
Various online references list various species of Arthroleptis in the forests of Ghana. However, Ghana frog expert Caleb Ofori Boateng told me that researchers have recently realized that the taxonomy of this genus is all muddled: the morphological characteristics traditionally used to distinguish the species have no consistent relationship to the DNA distinctions. Eventually the species in this genus will have to be redescribed, presumably with a different resulting set. So for now I'm calling them all Arthroleptis sp.
These are all small-to-tiny frogs, found either on the ground or in low vegetation. We saw almost all of them at night, but we did scare up a couple in leaf litter during the day.
Most (or maybe all?) Arthroleptis have some dark coloration in a curved fold over the tympanum, and also some sort of symmetrical pattern down the back. The last one here &endash; the reddish one &endash; seems to lack any pattern on the back, but Caleb did agree that it still counts as Arthroleptis. Based on various photos on the web, I would have identified most of these as Arthroleptis poecilonotus and the reddish one as Arthroleptis variables.
Different forest, still full of the same small-to-tiny indistinguishable frogs.
A few more from the next night. Near streams and ponds we saw various other frogs, but away from permanent water most of the frogs were these little guys.
