Amphibian Species of the World 5.6, an Online Reference

Hemimantidae Hoffmann, 1878, in Bronn (ed.), Die Klassen und Ordnungen des Thier-Reichs, 6(2): 613, 635. Type genus: Hemimantis Peters, 1863.

Phrynobatrachinae Laurent, 1941 "1940", Rev. Zool. Bot. Afr., 34: 79. Type species: Phrynobatrachus Günther, 1862. Given precedence over Hemimantidae Hoffmann, 1878, and placed on the Official List of Family-Group Names in Zoology, by Opinion 1921, Anonymous, 1999, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 56: 96-100.

Hemimantinae — Dubois, 1982, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 39: 136.

Phrynobatrachidae — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 313.

English Names

Puddle Frogs (Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 473).

Distribution

Subsaharan Africa.

Comment

Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 17, considered Phrynobatrachidae to be a subfamily of Ranidae. Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 136, placed Phrynobatrachidae phylogenetically as the sister taxon of Petropedetidae + Pyxicephalidae and rendered a partial revision. Bossuyt, Brown, Hillis, Cannatella, and Milinkovitch, 2006, Syst. Biol., 55: 583, corroborated the monophyly of Phrynobatrachidae (their Phrynobatrachinae), and its placement as the sister taxon of Petropedetidae + Pyxicephalidae. The placement of Phrynobatrachidae + (Petropedetidae + Pyxicephalidae)—Africanura of Frost et al. (2006)—they placed in a slightly different position. Frost et al. (2006) placed Africanura as the sister taxon of Saukrobatrachia (Dicroglossidae + Mantellidae + Rhacophoridae + Nyctibatrachidae + Ranidae) and Bossuyt et al. (2006) placed Africanura as the sister taxon of a larger group composed of Saukrobatrachia of Frost et al. (2006) as well as Micrixalidae and Ceratobatrachidae, placed by Frost et al. (2006) outside of this group. Wiens, Sukumaran, Pyron, and Brown, 2009, Evolution, 63: 1217-1231, suggested considerable phylogenetic structure within the group although their placement of Phrynobatrachidae within Ranoides has no confidence numbers attached to it, suggesting that this placement may not be well-supported. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences, confirmed this arrangement. See comments under Ericabatrachus and Natalobatrachus (Pyxicephalidae: Cacosterninae). Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 473, provided a general taxonomic account and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of amphibian biology. Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357-364, considered this taxon a distinct family based on its Mesozoic origin. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon.

Contained taxa

• Phrynobatrachus Günther, 1862 (85 sp.)

External Links

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• To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank