Amphibians collected by the Pacific Scientific Comission (between 1862 and 1865), preserved in the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid

Abstract

The Pacific Scientific Commission (CCP) is considered to be the most important scientific expedition carried out by Spain to the American continent in the nineteenth century. In a little more than three years (August 1862 to December 1865), over eighty thousand specimens of fauna and flora, corresponding to nearly ten thousand different species, were collected and sent to Spain. The expedition probably sent to Madrid 786 amphibians belonging to 139 species, which suffered the vicissitudes to which the herpetological collection of the Natural History Museum was subjected in subsequent years. This work contains the results of the recovery and museological documentation tasks carried out on the amphibian specimens collected by the expedition, including information from archives, old catalogues, old collection records, old labels, and jars where they were kept. In order to document the places and dates of collection, part of the itinerary of the expedition is reconstructed by means of field diaries. By means of a museological catalogue, detailed information is given on the current taxonomic status and information associated with the extant specimens from this expedition, which currently amount to 643 specimens –81’8% of the 786 amphibians historically ascribed to CCP by Almagro (1866)– belonging to 61 taxa at species level, 17 of which are cited for the first time as having been collected by the CCP. 672 amphibians (included in 58 minor taxa) were used by Jiménez de la Espada; of these, 522 (77’67% of the total) included in 43 taxa (74’13% of total taxa) have been located during this research. Given our lack of knowledge of the South- American batracological fauna during the second half of the nineteenth century, publications by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada based on part of this material have become taxonomic classics. In this regard, there are many nomenclatural types used by Jiménez de la Espada between 1871 and 1875 for the description of one family, thirteen genera, and 36 species and sub-species of neontropical amphibians, some of which were regarded as lost in taxonomic literature.