''Lithobates'' is a genus of

true frog True frogs is the common name for the frog family Ranidae. They have the widest distribution of any frog family. They are abundant throughout most of the world, occurring on all continents except Antarctica. The true frogs are present in North Am ...

s, of the family Ranidae. The name is derived from '' litho-'' (stone) and the Greek ' (, one that treads), meaning one that treads on rock, or rock climber. The name was defined by Hillis and Wilcox (2005) for a subgenus of four Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

n frogs within the genus ''

Rana Rana may refer to: Astronomy * Rana (crater), a crater on Mars * Delta Eridani or Rana, a star People, groups and titles * Rana (name), a given name and surname (including a list of people and characters with the name) * Rana (title), a histori ...

''. The subgenus was subsequently expanded to seven species in Central and South America in a systematic revision of the genus ''Rana''. The name was previously used by Frost ''et al.'' as a separate genus of ranid frogs that included most of the North American frogs traditionally included in the genus ''Rana'',Frost, Darrel R. (2006): Amphibian Species of the World Version 3
Petropedetidae Noble, 1931
American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. Retrieved 2006-AUG-05., Frost, Darrel R. et al. (2006): The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. Number 297. New York. including the American bullfrog and

northern leopard frog ''Lithobates pipiens''Integrated Taxonomic Information System nternet2012''Lithobates pipiens'' pdated 2012 Sept; cited 2012 Dec 26Available from: www.itis.gov/ or ''Rana pipiens'', commonly known as the northern leopard frog, is a species of le ...

. Frost used the name in this sense in the frog section of a North American common names list edited by Crother (2008). This proposed change has since been rejected by others, such as Stuart (2008), Pauly et al. (2009), AmphibiaWeb,AmphibiaWeb: Information on amphibian biology and conservation. eb application 2012. Berkeley, California
''Rana''
/ref> and Yuan et al. (2016). AmphibiaWeb, available at http://amphibiaweb.org/, an online compendium of amphibian names, follows Yuan et al. (2016) in recognizing ''Lithobates'' as a subgenus. On the other hand, ''Amphibian Species of the World'' 6.0, an online reference, uses ''Lithobates'' as a genus. This definition is also followed by, e.g., the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of nat ...

(IUCN) and the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles.

Species

These species are recognised in the genus ''Lithobates'': Alternatively, if ''Lithobates'' is treated as a subgenus (neotropical true frogs), then this narrower definition would contain the following species:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2047738 True frogs Amphibian genera Amphibians of North America Amphibians of Central America Amphibians of South America Taxa named by Leopold Fitzinger