Amphibian Species of the World 5.6, an Online Reference

Heleophryninae Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 498. Type genus: Heleophryne Sclater, 1898.

Heleophrynidae Hoffman, 1935, Soöl. Navors. Nas. Mus. Bloemfontein, 1: 2. Coined as new family apparently in ignorance of Noble, 1931.

Heliophrynidae — Heyer, 1975, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 199: 48. Incorrect subsequent spelling.

Heliophryninae — Laurent, 1980 "1979", Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 104: 417.

Heleophrynoidea — Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 9. Superfamily.

English Names

Ghost Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 51; Channing, 2001, Amph. Cent. S. Afr.: v).

Distribution

Mountainous areas of the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces of Rep. South Africa, east through the KwaZulu-Natal midlands escarpment, Maluti Mountains, and along the Drakensberg mountains and western Swaziland to northeastern South Africa; northern highlands of Lesotho.

Comment

Heyer and Liem, 1976, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 233, and Lynch, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans: 139, considered Heleophrynidae to be a subfamily of Myobatrachidae (sensu lato) and the sister-taxon of Limnodynastinae (now Limnodynastidae). The connection of Heleophrynidae with Myobatrachidae (sensu lato) was supported by mitchondrial DNA ( Ruvinsky and Maxson, 1996, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 5: 533-547). Haas, 2003, Cladistics, 19: 23-89, suggested on the basis of larval evidence that Heleophryne is distantly related to other frogs, but most likely outside of Neobatrachia. Hoegg, Vences, Brinkmann, and Meyer, 2004, Mol. Biol. Evol., 21: 1188-1200; San Mauro, Vences, Alcobendas, Zardoya, and Meyer, 2005, Am. Nat., 165: 590-595; 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; and Roelants, Gower, Wilkinson, Loader, Biju, Guillaume, Moriau, and Bossuyt, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104: 887-892, provided evidence that Heleophrynidae is the sister taxon of all remaining Neobatrachia, confirming at least part of Haas' earlier suggestion. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 445, provided a general taxonomic account and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of amphibian biology. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences confirmed the position of Heleophrynidae as the sister taxon of all remaining neobatrachians. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this family-group taxon.

Contained taxa

• Hadromophryne Van Dijk, 2008 (1 sp.)
• Heleophryne Sclater, 1898 (6 sp.)

External Links

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• To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank