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The Sahara frog, Pelophylax saharicus, is a large water frog of the family Ranidae, native across North Africa, including Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, as well as the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Introduced populations are established well outside that range, on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, and the species is present as an invasive in parts of southern France. It is known by other names in neighbouring languages: grenouille verte d’Afrique du Nord in French and rana verde norteafricana in Spanish.
Identification
The head is as wide as it is long, the snout is oval and the eyes have horizontal pupils. Colour is variable, reported as green, brown or mixed, sometimes with darker spots; some individuals carry a yellowish or greenish line along the spine, and the legs are always spotted or barred. A ridge, the dorsolateral fold, connects the nostrils and upper eyelids and runs to the groin, separating the back from the flanks. Males carry a pair of vocal sacs on the throat, used for calling. It is a sizeable frog: an exceptional female from Morocco reached a snout-vent length of 104.5 mm (4.1 in), though most individuals found in the field are smaller than that maximum.
Habitat and range
The Sahara frog is strongly aquatic, found in and near streams, oasis pools, irrigation canals, lakes and other water bodies, and it is abundant wherever suitable wetland habitat is present — a useful trait for a frog living across much of the Sahara’s margins, where water bodies are often small and scattered. Its native range covers Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Outside that range, it has established an introduced population on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands and occurs as an invasive species in parts of southern France. One such French population, at the Étang de Berre, was only discovered in 2021, though by then it had already been reproducing and present at the site since at least 2011, and had spread to several nearby localities.
Behaviour and breeding
As with other Pelophylax water frogs, breeding activity centres on the water bodies the species depends on year-round, and males use their paired vocal sacs to call from the water’s edge. The genus as a whole is distinguished from pond frogs by spending much of the summer living in aquatic habitat rather than on dry land, a pattern consistent with the Sahara frog’s own strong attachment to oases, canals and other water bodies described above. The sources opened for this page do not give further detail on this species’ own breeding season, clutch size or tadpole development, so this page does not state figures beyond what is sourced above.
Conservation
The IUCN category is shown in the facts box above. Population is currently stable, but the species faces potential future threats from over-exploitation and pollution of water sources, the kind of pressure typical of the oases and irrigation channels it depends on across North Africa.
Similar species
The Sahara frog’s closest living relative is Perez’s frog, Pelophylax perezi, of the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, from which its lineage diverged either around 16 million years ago under one dating, or as recently as 5.3 million years ago under another; the two species are sometimes confused where their ranges meet in southern France. Genetic analysis shows the Sahara frog is more closely related to European Pelophylax species than to east Asian members of the genus.
The species’ scientific name has shifted several times. It was first collected at multiple sites in Algeria, including the lake at El-Golea and the ditches of the Tidikelt oases, on a Sahara expedition in 1912 by the German ornithologist Ernst Hartert, and the zoologist George Albert Boulenger then described the specimens in 1913 as Rana esculenta saharica, treating them as a variant of the common edible frog. An earlier name proposed in 1882, Rana esculenta var. latastei, could not be used because Rana latastei already named a different frog described in 1879. The species was later placed in the Pelophylax subgenus in 1992, then moved to the genus Hylarana in 2005, before being returned to Pelophylax as a full genus in 2006, the classification used today.