Leptopelinae Laurent, 1972

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Arthroleptidae > Subfamily: Leptopelinae

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Leptopelini Laurent, 1972, Copeia, 1972: 201. Type genus: Leptopelis Günther, 1859.

Leptopelinae — Dubois, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 260.

Leptopelidae — Scott, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 523.

English Names

None noted.

Distribution

Subsaharan Africa.

Comment

As originally proposed the group name was Leptopelini, a tribe, for this group within Hyperoliinae (= Hyperoliidae of this catalog); see comment under Hyperoliidae. Drewes, 1984, Occas. Pap. California Acad. Sci., 139: 52, transferred Nesionixalus out of Leptopelinae and into the synonymy of Hyperolius (Hyperoliinae). Acanthixalus was transferred to Hyperoliinae by Channing, 1989, S. Afr. J. Zool., 24: 116. Vences, Kosuch, Glaw, Böhme, and Veith, 2003, J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 41: 205-213, presented data to suggest that Leptopelinae is in Astylosternidae (now part of Arthroleptidae), but retained Leptopelinae within Hyperoliidae pending additional confirmation. 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, provided additional information and placed Leptopelinae as the sister taxon of Arthroleptinae (including the astylosternines) and placed them together in the family Arthroleptidae. Scott, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 523, suggested on the basis of morphology and molecular data Leptopelidae is the sister taxon of Arthroleptidae (including astylosternines). Odierna, Aprea, Andreone, Böhme, and Vences, 2007, Ital. J. Zool., 74: 71-81, confirmed that Leptopelinae is far from Hyperoliidae, on the basis of karyological data. Van der Meijden, Vences, Hoegg, Boistel, Channing, and Meyer, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 44: 1017-1030, provided evidence that Arthroleptinae is paraphyletic with respect to Leptopelinae. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences, partitioned Arthroleptinae to remedy this situation and regarded their Astylosterninae to be the sister taxon of Leptopelinae + their Arthroleptinae and provided a phylogenetic tree for their leptopeline exemplars.

Contained taxa

Leptopelis Günther, 1859 (51 sp.)

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