Description
Vomerine teeth present. Posterior part of the tongue free and forked. Toes webbed. Omosternum and sternum ossified. Pupil of the eye horizontal. Inner metatarsal tubercle small. Snout moderately sharp. Male vocal sacs reduced. No temporal spot. Dorsal coloration brownish-grey or earth-grey, without pattern. Dorso-lateral folds absent. The skin on the back, sides of the body, and legs covered with numerous very distinct, longitudinally orientated, short wrinkles.

Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Japan. Introduced: United States.

U.S. state distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Hawaii

	View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.
	View Bd and Bsal data (42 records).

The species is distributed in Japan (northern, middle and southern parts of Honshu Island, as well as on the islands Shikoku, Kyushu, Sado, Oki, Goto, Yakushima, Tsushima and Tanegashima), Northern and Southwestern Korea, and Northeastern China (provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang). The frog inhabits mountainous and plain landscapes covered with herbaceous and arboreal vegetation: swamps, ponds, rice fields, springs, streams etc.

Life History, Abundance, Activity, and Special Behaviors
Poorly known.

Comments
Some researchers consider Chinese populations to belong to the separate species, Rana emeljanovi. However, it is more reasonable to retain this species name until the clarification of the taxonomic relationships between these forms is clarified.

This species was featured as News of the Week:

January 7, 2019: How sex is determined in frogs is complicated. In some species, males have two different sex chromosomes (an XX-XY sex chromosome system, like mammals) whereas females of other species are the sex with two different sex chromosomes (a ZZ-ZW sex chromosome system, like birds). Whether a species has an XX-XY or ZZ-ZW system has changed dozens of times throughout frog evolution. The Japanese wrinkled frog (Glandirana rugosa) is an evolutionary witness to the remarkable complexity of frog sex determination. Some populations have an XX-XY sex chromosome system whereas others have a ZZ-ZW system. In central Japan, there are adjacent populations of wrinkled frogs with different sex chromosome systems. Ogata et al. (2018) recently discovered a hybrid zone where these two populations meet. They found here a ZZ-ZW system but also a hybrid sex chromosome system. In this hybrid population, the Z-chromosome is partially derived from the old ZZ-ZW population’s Z-chromosome and partially derived from the XX-XY population’s Y-chromosome. The hybrid population’s W-chromosome is surprisingly derived from the X-chromosome of the XX-XY population. This work illustrates how the fantastic diversity of sex determining systems in frogs can arise from recycling sex-determining genomic material across populations and species (Written by Max Lambert).

References

Bannikov, A. G., Darevsky, I. S., Ishchenko, V. G., Rustamov, A. K., and Szczerbak, N. N. (1977). Opredelitel Zemnovodnykh i Presmykayushchikhsya Fauny SSSR [Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of the USSR Fauna]. Prosveshchenie, Moscow.

Fei, L. (1999). Atlas of Amphibians of China. Henan Publishing House of Science and Technology, Zhengzhou.

Kostin, A.A. (1943). ''Some notes on the Wrinkled Frogs Rana rugosa Schlegel and Rana emeljanovi Nikolsky in Manchuria.'' Bull. Inst. Sci. Res. Manchoukuo, 7(2).

Kuzmin, S. L. (1999). The Amphibians of the Former Soviet Union. Pensoft, Sofia-Moscow.

Stejneger, L. H. (1907). Herpetology of Japan and Adjacent Territory, United States National Museum Bulletin 58. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C..

Won, H.-K. (1971). Choson Ryangso Pyachyungryuchji [Amphibian and Reptilian Fauna of Korea]. Korean Academy of Sciences, Pyongyang.

Ye, C., Fei, L., and Hu, S. Q. (1993). Rare and Economic Amphibians of China. Sichuan Publishing House of Science and Technology, Chengdu.

Zhao, E. and Adler, K. (1993). Herpetology of China. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford, Ohio.

Zhao, E. and Zhao, H. (1994). Chinese Herpetological Literature: Catalogue and Indices. Chengdu University of Science and Technology, Chengdu.

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2019 Glandirana rugosa: Wrinkled Frog <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/5138> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Nov 23, 2024.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2024. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 23 Nov 2024.

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