Bioacoustics of Arthroleptis poecilonotus

TAXONOMIC REMARKS . — The taxononmy of A. poecilonotus needs revision including specimens over all its rather large range ( Lamotte 1967a ; Rödel & Agyei 2003 ; Rödel & Bangoura 2004 ; Rödel et al. 2005 ; Leaché et al. 2006 ; Frétey 2008 ). Remarkably, it has a rather precise onymotope (type-locality), “holländische Besitzungen (Boutry) an der Küste von Guinea ” [Dutch possessions (Boutry) on the coast of Guinea ], now Boutre, a place in Ahanta West district, Western Region, Ghana . During field work, specimens of various shapes and colours were collected (see above). The same observations were made on specimens collected in the Atakora chain in northern Benin ( Nago et al. 2006 ). Rödel & Bangoura (2004) already mentioned that species identification is difficult, as intra-specific variation exceeds inter-specific variation in many populations and the characters of the types of various West African Arthroleptis species do not allow identification (M.-O. Rödel, unpubl. data). Rödel & Bangoura (2004) also discussed the available names for West African Arthroleptis species. Genetic differences between populations with clear acoustic differences are minimal (M.-O. Rödel, unpubl. data). Thus, apart from the short-legged A. brevipes (see above) and the more recently described, much larger, A. krokosua ( Ernst, Agyei & Rödel, 2008 ) , all Arthroleptis from the eastern upper Guinea forest zone (eastern Côte d’Ivoire to western Nigeria ) should be called A. poecilonotus . Records from beyond West Africa, published as A. poecilonotus , belong to different species ( Blackburn 2008 , 2010 ; Channing & Rödel 2019 ).