Arthroleptidae Mivart, 1869
Arthroleptina Mivart, 1869, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1869: 294. Type genus: Arthroleptis Smith, 1849.
Astylosterninae Noble, 1927, Ann. New York Acad. Sci., 30: 110. Type genus: Astylosternus Werner, 1898. Proposed as a subfamily of Ranidae.
Arthroleptinae — Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 515.
Arthroleptidae — Laurent, 1972, Copeia, 1972: 200.
Leptopelini Laurent, 1972, Copeia, 1972: 201. Type genus: Leptopelis Günther, 1859. Synonymy by 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: 234.
Leptopelinae — Dubois, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 260.
Arthroleptoidae — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 309. Coined as an explicit epifamily.
Astylosternidae — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 309.
Astylosternini — 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: 234.
English Names
None noted.
Distribution
Subsaharan Africa.
Comment
Vences, Kosuch, Glaw, Böhme, and Veith, 2003, J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 41: 205-213, presented data to suggest that Leptopelinae is more closely related to former Astylosternini (Arthroleptidae) than to Hyperoliidae, but retained the group within Hyperoliidae pending additional confirmation. They also suggested on the basis of 16S mDNA (their fig. 2) that Arthroleptis is not monophyletic, although Zimkus and Blackburn, 2008, Breviora, 513: 9, noted in the Vences et al. (2003) paper a misidentification of a Phrynobatrachus sequence as Arthroleptis, which likely is responsible for this result. 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, provided additional evidence, showed Leptopelinae to be the sister taxon of Arthroleptinae (in which they included the astylosternines), and transferred Leptopelinae from Hyperoliidae into Arthroleptidae, the sister taxon of Hyperoliidae. Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 13, considered Arthroleptinae, Astylosterninae, and Leptopelinae (Arthroleptidae of this catalog) to constitute three of six subfamilies of his enlarged Brevicipitidae. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 470, 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 Astylosterninae (their exemplar being Trichobatrachus) and Arthroleptidae (including Leptopelinae) as distinct families because of a suggested Mesozoic divergence. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their large molecular study suggested that Arthroleptidae of Frost et al., 2006, is paraphyletic with respect to Leptopelinae and they recognized Astylosterninae as a remedy for this. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, discussed the taxonomy of the group and did not recognize subfamilies due to evidentiary uncertainty.
Contained taxa
- Arthroleptinae Mivart, 1869 (63 sp.)
- Leptopelinae Laurent, 1972 (51 sp.)
External Links
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