Leptobrachium Tschudi, 1838

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Megophryidae > Genus: Leptobrachium

Leptobrachium Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 81. Type species: Leptobrachium hasseltii Tschudi, 1838, by monotypy.

Septobrachium Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 45. Apparent original error; see comment by Zhao and Adler, 1993, Herpetol. China: 116, and by Dubois and Ohler, 1998, Dumerilia, 4: 21.

Nireus Theobald, 1880, in Spearman (ed.), British Burma Gazeteer, 1: 638. Type species: Nireus pulcherrimus Theobald, 1880, by monotypy. Synonymy by Mason, 1882, Burma, Ed. 3: 293.

Vibrissaphora Liu, 1945, J. West China Border Res. Soc., Ser. B, 15: 28. Type species: Vibrissaphora boringii Liu, 1945, by monotypy. Synonymy (as a subgenus of Leptobrachium) by Dubois and Ohler, 1998, Dumerilia, 4: 26. Synonymy with Leptobrachium by Rao and Wilkinson, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 46: 69, and Zheng, Li, and Fu, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 46: 695-707.

English Names

Eastern Spadefoot Toads (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 85).

Spiny Toads (Vibrissaphora [no longer recognized]: Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 87).

Moustache Toads (Vibrissaphora [no longer recognized]: Zheng and Zeng, 2003, Sichuan J. Zool., 22: 271).

Distribution

Southern China and India to islands of the Sunda Shelf and the Philippines.

Comment

See Dubois, 1980, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 49: 474, and Dubois and Ohler, 1998, Dumerilia, 4: 1-32. See accounts and key by Liu, Hu, and Zhao, 1980, Acta Herpetol. Sinica, Chengdu, 3 (1): 1-9. Lathrop, Murphy, Orlov, and Ho, 1998, Russ. J. Herpetol., 5: 51-60, provided a key to the species of Leptobrachium (Leptobrachium) of Indochina. Matsui, Nabhitabhata, and Panha, 1999, Japan. J. Herpetol., 18: 19-29, discussed a number of taxonomic difficulties in Thailand. Malkmus, Manthey, Vogel, Hoffmann, and Kosuch, 2002, Amph. Rept. Mount Kinabalu: 91, provided a key to the species of Borneo. Ohler, Teynié, and David, 2004, Raffles Bull. Zool., 52: 698, provided a table comparing the species within the genus. Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 69, provided a key to the species of China. Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 6-21 (12) noted that Leptobrachium is delimited on the basis of plesiomorphies with respect to Vibrissaphora, taxa which they treated as coordinate subgenera. Fu, Weadick, and Bi, 2007, J. Zool., London, 273: 315-325, suggested that Leptobrachium is the sister taxon of Vibrissaphora. Fei, Ye, Jiang, Cheng, Cai, Tang, Cai, Gao, and Wei, 1995, Acta Herpetol. Sinica, 4-5: 65-71, presented a phylogenetic analysis of the species of nominal Vibrissaphora and recognized two species groups. Zhao, Wu, and Yang, 1983, Acta Herpetol. Sinica, Chengdu, N.S.,, 2 (1): 15-20, provided some additional discussion. Zheng and Zeng, 2003, Sichuan J. Zool., 22: 268-272, discussed the species of Vibrissaphora and provided a key. Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 70, provided a key for Chinese species of Vibrissaphora. Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 6-21, ranked Vibrissaphora as a subgenus of Leptobrachium, delimited by apomorphies, but coordinate with a coordinate subgenus, Leptobrachium, delimited by plesiomorphies at the level of Megophryidae. Fu, Weadick, and Bi, 2007, J. Zool., London, 273: 315-325, suggested that Leptobrachium is the sister taxon of Vibrissaphora. Rao and Wilkinson, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 46: 61-73, subsequently suggested on the basis of denser taxon sampling that Vibrissaphora is non-monophyletic and expanded the Vibrissaphora boringii group to included Vibrissaphora boringii, Vibrissaphora leishanensis, Vibrissaphora liui, and Vibrissaphora yaoshaneensis and the Vibrissaphora ailaonica group including Vibrissaphora ailaonica, Vibrissaphora echinata, and Vibrissaphora ngoclinhensis. Zheng, Li, and Fu, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 46: 695-707, provided an inferred phylogeny of the group and regarded Vibrissaphora as a synonym of Leptobrachium (at the genus level) and rejected the monophyly of Leptobrachium and Vibrissaphora as subgenera. Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2009, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 2, provided accounts and a key to the Chinese species for Leptobrachium (pp. 247-266) and Vibrissaphora (pp. 266-297); these authors considered Leptobrachium and Vibrissaphora to be separate genera, but their text was written prior to the synonymy. Brown, Siler, Diesmos, and Alcala, 2010 "2009", Herpetol. Monogr., 23: 1-44, reported on molecular phylogenetics of Leptobrachium. Matsui, Hamidy, Murphy, Khonsue, Yambun, Shimada, Norhayati, Daicus, and Jiang, 2010, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 56: 259-272, reported on the molecular phylogenetics within the taxon and recognized two major monophyletic groups within it, one of which their clade B (China and Indochina) they considered as a subgenus, Vibrissaphora, and their clade B (Sundas to Thailad) the applied the subgeneric name Leptobrachium. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences, suggested a tree of their exemplar species and suggested that Leptobrachium is the sister taxon of Scutiger + Oreolalax.

Contained taxa

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