Vegas Valley leopard frog
species of amphibian
The Vegas Valley leopard frog (Lithobates fisheri), also known as the Las Vegas leopard frog, is an extinct species of frog. It once occurred in the Las Vegas Valley, as well as Tule Springs, Clark County, southern Nevada in the United States, at elevations between 370 and 760 m (1,210 and 2,490 ft). It was believed to be the only frog endemic to the United States to have become extinct in modern times.
History
A. Vanderhorst collected 10 specimens of this species at Tule Springs on January 13, 1942. These frogs were believed to be the last recorded specimens of the Vegas Valley leopard frog and are now in the University of Michigan Museum of Comparative Zoology collection. The Vegas Valley leopard frog was considered extinct after extensive searches have failed to locate the species.
Taxonomy
In 2011, a genetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA from preserved museum specimens of the Vegas Valley leopard frog revealed it forms a clade with the northwestern Mogollon Rim populations of the Chiricahua leopard frog (Lithobates chiricahuensis), which is extant but threatened. The authors argue that while it has been extirpated from the Las Vegas area, the frog is not extinct because populations formerly ascribed to the Chiricahua leopard frog actually belong to the Vegas Valley leopard frog. However, subsequent population genetic analyses using microsatellites have failed to recover the same patterns, calling into question whether these populations are ascribable to the Vegas Valley leopard frog. The 2021 revision of the IUCN Red List assessment does not recognize the northwestern Mogollon Rim populations as belonging to the Vegas Valley leopard frog and lists the species as extinct.
The public source identifies “Vegas Valley leopard frog” as species of amphibian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Vegas, Valley and leopard.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vegas Valley leopard frog” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.