Xenopus poweri Hewitt 1927

Conradie, Werner, Bills, Roger & Branch, William R., 2016, The herpetofauna of the Cubango, Cuito, and lower Cuando river catchments of south-eastern Angola, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (e 126) 10 (2), pp. 6-36 : 17

Xenopus poweri Hewitt 1927

Power’s Platanna

Material: PEM A10937‒10942 (43), and 10971 (44a); SAIAB 101029 (44a).

Comment: Based on CO1 barcoding genes, Xenopus from the Cuando River are genetically differentiated from those from the Cuito and Cubango River systems (Conradie unpublished data). Eastern populations from the Cuando River are therefore provisionally assigned to X. poweri Hewitt, 1927 , and western records from the Cuito and Cubango River to X. petersii Bocage, 1895 . Although Schmidt and Inger (1959) assigned X. poweri to Bocage’s “Var. B” and restricted X. petersii to Bocage “Var. A,” preliminary genetic findings do not support this, and most Angolan material should be assigned to X. petersii ( Furman et al. 2015; Conradie and Evans work in progress). This includes specimens from Cubal da Ganda ( Laurent 1964) and Huila ( Schmidt and Inger 1959) referred by them to X. poweri . The survey records for X. poweri are thus the first for Angola. An early record from Cazombo ( Laurent 1964) also falls within the newly proposed distribution of X. poweri by Furman et al. (2015), but requires verification. When Furman et al. (2015) validated the specific status of X. poweri (previously confused with X. laevis ), they referred eastern X. petersii material from the Okavango system in Botswana to the species.