ABSTRACT

Arthroleptis poecilonotus, a native tree frog species to West Africa’s tropical region was collected from the Department of Wildlife and Forestry's arboretum in the Faculty of Agricultural Science, University of Benin, Edo State. Visual Acoustic Encounter Survey (VAES) technique was used to manually collect tree frogs. Thirty two (32) tree frogs were sampled altogether. Six morphometric characters were measured for both the males and females to find morphometric differences. Characters taken into consideration were the body length, head width, jaw length, femur length, tibia length and foot length. The morphometric analyses indicated that the tree frogs were quite similar in size to other Arthroleptis genus, with a mean body length of 20.5mm and 27.2mm, mean jaw width of 6.8mm and 8.6mm, mean head width of 8mm and 10mm, mean femur length of 6.5mm and 8.2mm, mean tibia length of 6.3mm and 8mm, mean foot length of 1.3mm and 2mm for males and females respectively. In general, males of Arthroleptis poecilonotus were smaller and more slender than the females. Because of these character differences in males and females, all six characters should be used together to reliably distinguish males from females. Besides body size difference, A. poecilonotus were found to have similar body morphology in their males and females alike.