[2] It is a mid-sized, stout brown frog, with a distinctive suprabrachial gland and a fold of skin running from the shoulders to the hips.

[3][4] He could not tell for certain where these specimens were collected, as they had reached him via an animal trader and not from the actual collector, but suspected it to be Okinawa in the central Ryūkyūs, the most accessible island of the archipelago.

Later still, the presence of the brown frogs of Okinawa was verified and they were studied, with scientists believing that Boettger's taxon applied to them.

By the 1970s, however, the southern frogs, though superficially similar in being about the same size and color, were realized to differ significantly from those on Okinawa.

Should Boettger's specimen, e.g. by ancient DNA analysis, turn out to be from Ishigaki and be subspecifically distinct from the Iriomote population, the latter would become subspecies psaltes.