THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Amphibia    Anura    Bufonidae  

South American Cane Toad
Rhinella marina (Linnaeus, 1758)

Current SSAR Comments:
Native to northern South America east of the Andes (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela). The history of the introduction of this species complex (all treated as R. marina) into the United States is detailed by many authors (Lobdell, 1936, Pages 123–124 in Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1936, Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida; Neil, 1957, Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Series 2: 175–220; Riemer, 1959, Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 21: 207–211; King and Krakauer, 1966, Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 29: 144–154; Easteal, 1981, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 16: 93–113; Krysko 2019, Rhinella marina. Pages 144–146 in Krysko et al. (Editors). Amphibians and reptiles of Florida. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, Florida). Building upon prior studies (Slade and Craig, 1998, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 265: 769–777; Vallinoto et al., 2010, Zoologica Scripta 39: 128–140), Acevedo (2016, Zootaxa 4103: 574–586), provided formal names for the lineages east (R. marina) and west (R. horribilis) of the Andes. In a range-wide genetic analysis, Mittan-Moreau et al. (2022, Molecular Ecology 31: 6440–6456) found that their samples from central (Tampa, Hillsborough County and Lakeland, Polk County) and southern (Miami, Miami-Dade County) Florida were R. horribilis (monophyletic and sister to a clade from Panama and Texas). They found no evidence that the many purported introductions of R. marina lineages (from the Guianas and Puerto Rico) into Florida persist but that the imported toads from Colombia (King and Krakauer, op. cit.) do. Many areas in Florida remain unsampled to determine if R. marina occurs in Florida. The species is established in Hawai'i (islands of Hawai'i, Kaua'i, Lana'i, Moloka'i, Maui, and O'ahu; McKeown, 1996, Diamond Head Publishing, Incorporated, Los Osos, California; Mittan-Moreau et al. (op. cit.).

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2024.03.24.12.21.40)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 0.62 MB

First instance(s) of published English names:
Marine Toad (Rana marina: Griffith, Edward and Edward Pidgeon. 1831. The class reptilia arranged by the Baron Cuvier, with specific descriptions. Part 2. Whittaker, Treacher, and Company, London. 1-481pp.); Marine Toad (Bufo marinus: Wright, Anna Allen, and Alex Hazen Wright. 1933. Handbook of frogs and toads. The frogs and toads of the United States and Canada Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca, NY. xi+231pp.); Giant Toad (Bufo marinus: Wright, Anna Allen, and Alex Hazen Wright. 1933. Handbook of frogs and toads. The frogs and toads of the United States and Canada Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca, NY. xi+231pp.);

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
Amphibian Species of the World
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Pertinent LIterature:
1758 Linné, Carl von (=Linneaus). Systema Naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. [System of Nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera, species with characters, differences, synonyms, places.] 10th Edition, Volume 1, L. Salvius, Stockholm. iv + 826pp.
1936 Lobdell, R. N. Field and laboratory studies upon insect pests of south Florida with aprticular reference to mehtods of control. Pages 123-124 in Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30,1936 Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. pp.
1937 Lobdell, R. N. Field and laboratory studies upon insect pests of south Florida with aprticular reference to mehtods of control. Pages 141-142 in Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1937. Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. pp.
1957 Neill, Wilfred T. Historical biogeography of present-day Florida. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Series 2(7):175-220
1958 Duellman, William E. and Albert Schwartz. Amphibians and reptiles of southern Florida. Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Biological Sciences. 3(5):181–324
1959 Riemer, William J. Giant toads of Florida. Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 21(3):207-211
1966 King, F. Wayne and Thomas Krakauer. The exotic herpetofauna of southeast Florida. Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 29(2):144–154
1968 Krakauer, Thomas. The ecology of the neotropical toad, Bufo marinus, in south Florida. Herpetologica 24(3):214-221
1977 Smith, Hobart M., Thomas Schneider and Rozella B. Smith. An overlooked synonym of the Giant Toad Bufo marinus (Linnaeus)(Amphibia, Anura, Bufonidae). Journal of Herpetology 11(4):423-425
1977 Smith, Hobart M. and Anthony J. Kohler. A survey of herpetological introductions in the United States and Canada. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 80(1/2):241-
1981 Easteal, Simon. The history of introductions of Bufo marinus (Amphibia: Anura); a natural experiment in evolution. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 16(2):93–113
1986 Easteal, Simon. Bufo marinus. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles (395):1-4
1988 Easteal, Simon. Range expansion and its genetic consequences in populations of the Giant Toad, Bufo marinus. Evolutionary Biology 23():49–84
1996 McKeown, Sean. A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians in the Hawaiian Islands. Diamond Head Publishing, Inc., Los Osos, California. pp.
1998 Slade, R. W. and Craig Moritz. Phylogeography of Bufo marinus from its natural and introduced ranges. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 265(1398):769-777
2006 Frost, Darrel R, Taran Grant, Julian Faivovich, Raoul H. Bain, Alexander Haas, Celio F. B. Haddad, Rafael O. De Sa, Alan Channing, Mark Wilkinson, Stephen C. Donnellan, Christopher J. Raxworthy, Jonathan A. Campbell, Boris L. Blotto, Paul Moler, Robert C. Drewes, Ronald A. Nussbaum, John D. Lynch, David M. Green, and Ward C. Wheeler. The amphibian tree of life Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (297):370
2007 Chaparro, J. C., Jennifer B. Pramuk, and Andrew G. Gluesenkamp. A new species of arboreal Rhinella (Anura: Bufonidae) from cloud forest of southeastern Peru. Herpetologica 63():203-212
2010 Vallinoto, Marcelo, Fernando Sequeira, Davidson Sodré, José A. R. Bernardi, Iracilda Sampaio, Horacio Schneider. Phylogeny and biogeography of the Rhinella marina species complex (Amphibia, Bufonidae) revisited: Implications for Neotropical diversification hypotheses. Zoologica Scripta 39(2):128-140
2016 Acevedo, Aldemar A., Margarita Lampo, and Roberto Cipriani. The Cane or Marine Toad, Rhinella marina (Anura, Bufonidae): Two genetically and morphologically distinct species. Zootaxa 4103(6):574–586
2019 Krysko, Kenneth L., Kevin M. Enge, and Paul E. Moler (Editor) Amphibians and Reptiles of Florida. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 728pp.
2020 Bessa-Silvaa, Adam, Marcelo Vallinoto,⁎, Iracilda Sampaio, Oscar A. Flores-Villela, Eric N. Smith, Fernando Sequeira. The roles of vicariance and dispersal in the differentiation of two species of the Rhinella marina species complex. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 145(April 2020):1-12
2021 Pereyra, Martín O., Boris L. Blotto, Diego Baldo, Juan C. Chaparro, Santiago R. Ron, Agustín J. Elias-Costa, Patricia P. Iglesias, Pablo J. Venegas, Maria Tereza C. Thomé, Jhon Jairo Ospina-Sarria, Natan M. Maciel, Marco Rada, Francisco Kolenc, Claudio Borteiro, Mauricio Rivera-Correa, Fernando J.M. Rojas-Runjaic, Jiří Moravec, Ignacio De La Riva, Ward C. Wheeler, Santiago Castroviejo-Fisher, Taran Grant, Célio F.B. Haddad, Julián Faivovich Evolution in the genus Rhinella: A total evidence phylogenetic analysis of Neotropical True Toads (Anura: Bufonidae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (447):1–156
2021 Rivera, Danielle, Ivan Prates, Thomas J. Firneno Jr., Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues, Janalee P. Caldwell, Matthew K. Fujita Phylogenomics, introgression, and demographic history of South American true toads (Rhinella). Molecular Ecology 2022(31):978–992.
2022 Meshaka, Walter E. Jr., R. Bruce Bury, Suzanne L. Collins, and Malcolm L. McCallum. Exotic Amphibians and Reptiles of the United States. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 245pp.
2022 Mittan-Moreau, Cinnamon S., Crystal Kelehear, Luís Felipe Toledo, Jamie Bacon, Juan M. Guayasamin, Andrew Snyder, and Kelly R. Zamudio. Cryptic lineages and standing genetic variation across independent cane toad introductions. Molecular Ecology 31(24):6440–6456
2022 Abercrombie, Hope E., Michelle Ferrera, Paul Schultz, Stephanie Watkins, Eric Eversole, Daniel B. Estabrooks, and Natalie Ferrera. Geographic distribution: Rhinella horribilis. Herpetological Review 53(1):74–75

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Thursday 30 January 2025 02:38 CT