Pelodytidae Bonaparte, 1850

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Pelodytidae

Pelodytina Bonaparte, 1850, Conspect. Syst. Herpetol. Amph.: 1 p. Type genus: Pelodytes Bonaparte, 1838.

Pelodytides — Bruch, 1862, Würzb. Naturwiss. Z., 3: 221.

Pelodytidae — Cope, 1866, J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, Ser. 2, 6: 68. Taylor, 1941, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 27: 61.

Pelodytinae — Fejérváry, 1923, Ann. Hist. Nat. Mus. Natl. Hungarici, 20: 181.

English Names

Parsley Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 96).

Mud Divers (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 109; Kuzmin, 1999, Amph. Former Soviet Union: 225).

Distribution

Southwestern Europe and the Caucasus.

Comment

Savage, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans: 351-445, considered Pelodytidae to be a subfamily (Pelodytinae) of Pelobatidae, as did Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 8. See comment under Pelobatidae. Maglia, 1998, Sci. Pap. Nat. Hist. Mus. Univ. Kansas, 10: 1-19, suggested a relationship of (((Pelobatidae) (Pelodytidae)) Megophryidae). 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, suggested Megophryidae to be the sister taxon of Pelobatidae. Veith, Fromhage, Kosuch, and Vences, 2006, Contrib. Zool., Amsterdam, 75: 109-120, reported on biogeography and phylogeny in western populations. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 443-444, 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 placement of Pelodytidae as the sister taxon of Pelobatidae + Megophryidae. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon.

Contained taxa

Pelodytes Bonaparte, 1838 (3 sp.)

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