Western Spadefoot

Diagnosis. The largest Pelobates species, P. cultripes differs from the other Eurasian spadefoots by metatarsal spades being entirely black and a flat skull. Sizes largely overlap between sexes although males are generally smaller than females (Fig. 2). The background coloration can be yellow, gray, or brown, reticulated by dark patches; it typically lacks orange spots (Fig. 3). Average SVL = 74 mm (range: 32 - 105 mm) for females (n = 16 populations) and 71 mm (34 - 93 mm) for males (n = 17 populations) (Suppl. material 1, Table S 1; Fig. 2). The karyotype consists of six large and seven small (i. e. <6 % of total length) pairs of two-armed chromosomes (Morescalchi 1967, 1971; Morescalchi et al. 1977; Schmid et al. 1987; Herrero and Talavera 1988). Large centromeric C-bands appears in pairs 1, 2, 4, 9, and 12; pericentric bands in the short arm of pair 1 and the long arm of pair 8; telomeric bands in the long arms of pairs 1, 2, and 11; the short arm of pair 7 is almost heterochromatic (Herrero and Talavera 1988). Nucleolus organizers (NORs) are in the short arm of pair 7 (Schmid et al. 1987). The nuclear DNA content averages 7.4 pg (Litvinchuk et al. 2013).