Crinia

Crinia is a genus of frog, native to Australia, and part of the family Myobatrachidae. It consists of small frogs, which are distributed throughout most of Australia, excluding the central arid regions. Many of the species within this genus are physically indistinguishable, and can only be identified by their calls.

They have unwebbed toes and fingers, most of the species in these genus are polymorphic - meaning that several variations of colour and skin patterning exist in a single population and all species lay their eggs in small clumps in water.

The generic name Crinia likely derives from the Greek verb κρῑνω (krīnō) "to separate" as a reference to the frog's unwebbed digits, meaning "separated (toes)". Although Johann Jakob von Tschudi did not provide an etymology in 1838, he cited the frog's "free toes" (without webbing) as an important distinctive feature (most frogs have webbed feet).

During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s a lot of taxonomic work was done on this genus, frogs that were originally thought to be common eastern froglets (Crinia signifera) were described as other species of Crinia by mating call analysis and hybridization experiments. Two species originally described as Crinia were then placed in their own genus, Assa and Paracrinia. One species of both Geocrinia and Taudactylus were split from Crinia and the genus Bryobatrachus was also described only to be recently placed back into Crinia. The moss froglet, (Crinia nimbus) is very different physically and in its tadpole development. Due to the obvious differences with other species in Crinia this species is likely to be placed again into a separate genus.

Species

The genus Crinia contains 17 species:

Common name	Binomial name
Bilingual frog	Crinia bilingua (Martin, Tyler, and Davies, 1980)
Desert froglet	Crinia deserticola (Liem and Ingram, 1977)
Kimberley froglet	Crinia fimbriata Doughty, Anstis, and Price, 2009
Northern Flinders Ranges froglet	Crinia flindersensis Donnellan, Anstis, Price, and Wheaton, 2012
Quacking frog	Crinia georgiana (Tschudi, 1838)
Glauert's froglet	Crinia glauerti (Loveridge, 1933)
Sign-bearing froglet	Crinia insignifera (Moore, 1954)
Moss froglet	Crinia nimbus (Rounsevell, Ziegeler, Brown, Davies, and Littlejohn, 1994)
Eastern sign-bearing froglet	Crinia parinsignifera (Main, 1957)
False western froglet	Crinia pseudinsignifera (Main, 1957)
Remote froglet	Crinia remota (Tyler and Parker, 1974)
Streambank froglet	Crinia riparia (Littlejohn and Martin, 1965)
Common eastern froglet	Crinia signifera (Girard, 1853)
Sloane's froglet	Crinia sloanei (Littlejohn, 1958)
Small western froglet	Crinia subinsignifera (Littlejohn, 1957)
Tasmanian froglet	Crinia tasmaniensis (Günther, 1864)
Wallum froglet	Crinia tinnula (Straughan and Main, 1966)

References

• Amphibian Species of the World - Crinia Tschudi, 1838
• Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage
• Tschudi, Johann J. von (1838). Classification der Batrachier, mit Berücksichtigung der fossilen Tiere dieser Abteilung der Reptilien. Neuchâtel : Erück Petitpierre pp. 102.