Abstract
As part of his function as assistant to the director of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden, the Netherlands (RMNH, currently Naturalis Biodiversity Center), the German biologist Hermann Schlegel received several herpetological specimens from Algeria for identification purposes during the mid-19th century. These specimens were sent to him by Moritz Wagner, who undertook an expedition to Algeria between 1836 and 1838 (Wagner et al. 2012). As part of the publication describing the specimens collected on this expedition, Schlegel (1841) provided a description and diagnosis of Amietophrynus mauritanicus (Schlegel 1841) mainly based on a single specimen which is still extant in the RMNH. This specimen was treated as holotype by M. S. Hoogmoed in Frost (1985). During a recent appraisal of historical documentation dealing with north-west African amphibians (Beukema et al. 2013) we came across the account of Schlegel (1841) describing A. mauritanicus, and noticed the following issues; (i) Schlegel did not intend to describe A. mauritanicus as a new species; (ii) a single specimen is described in detail, but it is obvious from the description that it was based on multiple observed individuals; (iii) there is confusion on the type locality, which has been described to comprise multiple regions (e.g. Frost 2012) despite the assumed presence of only a single type specimen; (iv) Schlegel is shown as sole author while the account is in the plural (i.e. ‘wir’ – see also Wagner et al. 2012). Herein, we address these issues, provide a lectotype designation and restrict the type locality of A. mauritanicus following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1999).