A Günther’s Frog in Hong Kong

AJP spotted this frog at Tai Po Kau Forest Reserve last week. It is Günther’s Frog, named after Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Günther FRS (1830-1914) of the British Museum, or until he became a naturalized British subject in 1862, Albert K[C]arl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther. The species was described in 1882 by George Albert Boulenger FRS (1858-1937), another naturalized Brit at the same institution.

Günther's Frog

The three specimens of the frog shown in Boulenger’s catalogue (two females and one young) were collected at Amoy and were presented to the museum by Robert Swinhoe FRS who, for some of his time in China, was British Consul at Amoy (now Xiamen* in Fujian Province).

The plate showing Rana guentheri from Boulenger's Catalogue
for the British Museum published in 1882

Günther’s Frog was the second amphibian we saw after we arrived in Hong Kong in 1965. An evening walk to the lily pond in the university compound produced an abundance. They are common in lowland Hong Kong, with breeding starting in late March or early April. The frog is found in central and south China as well as Vietnam. Originally named Rana guentheri by Boulenger, it was known as Hylarana guentheri for many years before becoming Sylvirana guentheri as the result of a major molecular phylogenetic study in 2015.

The name of the frog always reminds me of another member of the Gunther family, Albert’s grand-daughter-in-law who I helped, I hope, in her research in the early 1970s. More on this—and the tragedy which killed a zoologist and left her a widow—in a future article.

The old Lily Pond in the University of Hong Kong
from Mellor B. 1980. The University of Hong Kong,
An Informal History.

*I wondered how the place we knew in English as ‘Amoy’ in the 1960s had become ‘Xiamen’ by the 1990s. The former is apparently the latter’s pronunciation in the Zhangzhou dialect of Hokkien.