Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Cameroon, Ghana

	View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.
	View Bd and Bsal data (36 records).

Xenopus fraseri has a small range that is in northern Ghana and northern Cameroon along the borderlands of the Sahel. It has been found to live in hot, arid savannah habitats (Evans et al. 2019).

Relation to Humans
This species has been harvested for human consumption and for the pet trade (IUCN 2017).

Comments
The species authority is: Boulenger, GA (1905). “On a Collection of Batrachians and Reptiles made in South Africa by Mr. C. H. B. Grant, and Presented to the British Museum by Mr. C. D. Rudd.” The Zoological Society of London, 75(3), 248-255

Whole genome mitochondrial sequences were analyzed from the X. fraseri type specimen and several other Xenopus specimens using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian methods. The study found that this species is the sister taxa to X. fischbergi and is firmly within the X. muelleri species complex, which also includes X. borealis. Xenopus fraseri appears to be more recently diverged and may have resulted from an allotetraploid event. This relationship is supported by morphological comparisons (Evans et al.2019).

This species name is in honor of Louis Fraser, the researcher who collected the first specimens of in 1852 (Boulenger 1905, Evans et al. 2019).

References

Boulenger, G.A. (1905). "On a Collection of Batrachians and Reptiles made in South Africa by Mr. C. H. B. Grant, and Presented to the British Museum by Mr. C. D. Rudd." The Zoological Society of London, 75(3), 248-255.

Evans, B.J., Gansauge, M.-T., Stanley, E.L., Furman, B.L.S., Cauret, C.M.S., Ofori-Boateng, C., Gvoždik, V., Streicher, J.W., Greenbaum, E., Tinsley, R.C., Meyer, M., Blackburn, D.C. (2019). "Xenopus fraseri: Mr. Fraser, where did your frog come from?" PLoS One, 14(9), e0220892. [link]

IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group. 2017. Xenopus fraseri. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017: e.T89257302A18397804. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2017-2.RLTS.T89257302A18397804.en. Downloaded on 13 December 2020.

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2021 Xenopus fraseri: Fraser’s Clawed Frog <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/5253> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Dec 5, 2021.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2021. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 5 Dec 2021.

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