This is a possibly obscure question for the herpetologists and frog people out there. I’ve been looking into the North American Wood Frog lately (Lithobates sylvaticus)—largely because they’re all over my property at the moment and they seem pretty dope.
But trying to get a better idea as to where the genus name Lithobates (“stone walker”) came from, I learned that it’s … less than 20 years old? I thought, “surely the frog is one of those animals that Linnaeus came up with the classifications for!”
So, pre-2005, were the Wood Frog and all other frogs just Rana etc., and Lithobates not yet dreamt of?
Wikipedia says Lithonates was named in 1843 by Fitzinger, but that the type species is now under Rana.
I could be wrong, but it sounds like originally there was Rana and Lithonates, then Lithonates was mostly merged into Rana and perhaps left as a subgenus, and recently there are some saying it should be a full genus again, but this is not yet accepted.
When I was an undergraduate at Pitt, there was a biology professor whose research involved frogs. He was a pretty cool guy. Once I stopped at his office to pick up a handout, and he showed me two porcelain frogs on his desk. They looked very realistic.
He asked me if I could tell the male from the female. I was reluctant to handle them, they looked valuable and delicate, but I compared their size, etc, and told him what I thought.
He picked them up and turned them over. They had really vulgar human genitalia. I laughed like a maniac.
Ha!