Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Frogs of the Genus Physalaemus in Southern Brazil with the Description of a New Species

1960; American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; Volume: 1960; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1440198

1938-5110

William W. Milstead,

Species Distribution and Climate Change

between the treeless pampas and the heavily forested Brazilian Highlands and between the timbered coast and the pampas. The Brazilian Highlands come into Rio Grande do Sul in the northern portion of the state; the coastal timber belt is present in the northeast; and the pampas enter the state from the southwest. The central portion of the state is an area of low elevation, known as the Depressdo Centril, and represents a more or less equal blending of forests and pampas. It consists of rolling grasslands with scattered patches of forest that are so dense that little sunlight reaches the forest floor. These stands of forest do not, however, have the epiphytes characteristic of the northern and coastal forests. Most of the field study of Physalaemus was done in the central depression and in the coastal belt. Some work, however, was done in all other regions of the state except the extreme south. Mello-Leitao (1942) recognizes only one biotic province, the Guarani province, in Rio Grande do Sul, while Cabrera and Yepes (1940) recognize three: the Tupi province in the northeast, the Subtropical over most of the state, and the Pampasico in the southwest. My interpretation is essentially the same as th t of Cabrera and Yepes. Acknowledgements.-My work in Brazil was supported by the Campanha Nacional de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivdl Superior (CAPES) of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture with a supplementary stipend from the Rockefeller Foundation. I am grateful to these two organizations for making this work possible. For their suggestions and interest in the work, I am indebted to Werner Bokermann, Bertha Lutz, the late Karl P. Schmidt, and Paulo Vanzolini. For aid in collecting, I wish to thank A. R. Cordeiro, Eugenio Grumann, Celso Jaeger, Thales de Lema, Jorge Petersen, and F. M. Salzano. Thanks are also due Antenor L. Carvalho (Museu Nacional, Brazil), Doris Cochran (United States National Museum, USNM), and Paulo Vanzol ni (Museu de Zoologia, Sao Paulo) for permitting me to examine specimens from the collections in their charge. By gre ment with CAPES, the majority of the specimens collected by me were equally divided between the Brazilian Museu Nacional (MN) and the Chicago Natural Hist ry Museum (CNHM). Additional specimens have been placed in the following collectio s: Instituto de Ciencias Naturais (CN), Universida e do Rio Grande do Sul; Museu do Zoologia (MZ), Sdo Paulo; Texas Techn logical College Zoology Collections (TT); and the Texas Natural History Collection (TNHC), University of Texas.