Parsley frog

Western Mud divers ( Pelodytes punctatus )

The Mud divers ( Pelodytes ) are small anurans and constitute the only genus of the family of mud diver ( Pelodytidae ). This consists of only three known species occurrences with one hand in Southwest and Western Europe, on the other hand, in the eastern Black Sea and the Caucasus region. Together with the American blade roots form the mud diver superfamily Pelodytoidea, which in turn is the sister group of toads frogs ( Pelobatoidea ) from European and Asian toads frogs. The next European cousins ​​are so like the spadefoot spadefoot toad.

Survey

The head-body length of mud diver is roughly comparable with that of the European tree frog or toads with about four to five centimeters. In addition, they have relatively long hind legs, a flat head and slotted vertical pupils (or those with a round shape and a vertical " central axis "). On her smooth-skinned to granulated warty - top you can usually find a pattern of olivgrünlichen spots or dots. The males have paired internal vocal sacs and cling to the females during amplexus in the lumbar region.

Mud divers have a more terrestrial lifestyle. However, the mating season they look to the waters in which they lay spawning portions in the form of very short strings or as slimy bags of water plants. The tadpoles are strikingly large in proportion to body size of adult animals.

Species and their distribution

The genus Pelodytes and also for the entire family Pelodytidae consists of only three known species, one of which was first described scientifically only a few years ago:

• Caucasian mud diver Pelodytes caucasicus Boulenger, 1896
• Iberian mud diver Pelodytes ibericus Sánchez- Herraiz, Barbadillo Escriva, Machordom & SANCHIZ, 2000
• Western mud diver Pelodytes punctatus ( Daudin, 1802)

Two species occur in western Europe before - both in the Iberian Peninsula, and one of them reached with northern France and Belgium almost to the southern border of Central Europe. The third type ( P. caucasicus ), however, with their presence in the Caucasus and the eastern side of the Black Sea strikingly widely separated geographically from the rest. The speciation was supported here by spatial isolation due to the ice ages.

The sake of completeness it should be mentioned that for two current members of the genus Litoria (Australian tree frogs ) and the term Pelodytes was used for the genus Pseudomonas Triton of the lung salamanders lots of individual authors in the 19th century.