70 



Jeffrey C. Beane 



Fig. 1 . Historical distribution of Rana heckscheri in North Carolina. Dots rep- 

 resent localities documented by specimens in curated collections. The triangle 

 represents an approximate locality supported by a specimen. 





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The first legitimate records of the river frog in North Carolina were 

 reported by DePoe and Funderburg (1959) and Simmons and Hardy (1959). The 

 apparent earliest specimen was collected as a tadpole by a University of North 

 Carolina student in March, 1957, at an imprecise locality on the Black River in 

 Sampson County, and kept in an aquarium at the University until it transformed 

 (DePoe and Funderburg 1959). It was later donated to the North Carolina State 

 Museum (NCSM 14610) by W. L. Engels. Simmons and Hardy (1959:37) 

 reported collecting a series of R. heckscheri tadpoles on 21 March and addition- 

 al specimens on 12 April 1958 (a date of 12 March was also reported later in the 

 same paper, but appears to be an erroneous reference to 21 March) from "a grav- 

 el pit pond" near Maxton in Robeson County, "located at the intersection of State 

 Highway 71 and the Lumbar [sic] River." They further reported that "a local 

 farmer, obviously familiar with the distinctive tadpoles, has been aware of their 

 occurrance [sic] in the Maxton ponds for at least fifteen years." It is not known 

 what became of the specimens Simmons and Hardy collected. No repository was 

 listed in the paper, and it is possible that the specimens were not saved. A pho- 

 tograph of one of the tadpoles was included; it appears to be the only published 

 photograph of a river frog tadpole from North Carolina. A currently existing 

 small, shallow pond near the west bank of the Lumber River just southwest of 

 the NC 7 1 bridge is probably the site referred to, but no R. heckscheri have been 

 found there in recent years. The locality for four specimens in the U.S. Nation- 

 al Museum (USNM 144367-144370), collected by Hardy 30 May-1 June 1960, 

 was given as only "Robeson-Scotland Co. line, Air Base," and may or may not 



