A New Species of Eleutherodactylus (Anura: Leptodactylidae) from the Darién Province, Panama

—A new species of Eleutherodactylus is described from the Serranı́a de Pirre, Darién Province, Panama. This species is similar to Eleutherodactylus altae and Eleutherodactylus pardalis, but can be differentiated by the lack of red or white spots on groin and limbs. RESUMEN.—Se describe una especie nueva de Eleutherodactylus de la Serranı́a de Pirre, Provincia de Darién, Panamá. Esta especie se asemeja a Eleutherodactylus altae y Eleutherodactylus pardalis, pero se diferencia de éstas por carecer manchas de color rojo o blanco en su ingle y extremidades. The frog fauna of Panama includes over 145 species (Ibáñez et al., 2001), and this diversity may be in large part caused by Panama’s unique position as a land bridge between Central and South America (Savage, 1982; Rand and Myers, 1990). The genus Eleutherodactylus exemplifies this mixing of faunas: about half of the Panamanian species belong to the Central American subgenus, Craugastor, and about half belong to the South American subgenus, Eleutherodactylus. Members of four different lineages within the latter subgenus arrived in Central America after the mid-Pliocene (Duellman, 2001:806–811). In this paper, we describe a new species of southern invader belonging to the Eleutherodactylus unistrigatus group of Lynch and Duellman (1997) and the Eleutherodactylus cruentus group of Savage (2002). In September 2002, we visited the old Cana goldmining site, now an ecotourism destination managed by Ancon Expeditions of Panama, located 6 km north of the Colombian border in the Darién National Park. On two nonconsecutive nights, we were able to search for reptiles and amphibians on the crest of the Pirre mountain range, 1200–1600 m in elevation. On both nights, we found one or two Eleutherodactylus that had the distinctive morphology and locomotor habits similar to Eleutherodactylus pardalis (Barbour, 1928) and Eleutherodactylus altae (Dunn, 1942). However, none of the three frogs we found had any trace of the large white (E. pardalis) or coralcolored (E. altae) spots found on the groin and legs that are diagnostic of these two species. We then checked the descriptions of all E. unistrigatus species (Lynch and Duellman, 1997) recorded from the Chocó region of Colombia (Duellman, 1 Corresponding Author. E-mail: [email protected]. edu 2 Cı́rculo Herpetológico de Panamá, Apartado 10762, Estafeta Universitaria, Panamá, Rep. de Panamá. 3 Departamento de Zoologı́a, Universidad de Panamá, Panamá, Rep. de Panamá. 240 PATRICK T. GREGORY