Rhinodermatidae Bonaparte, 1850

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Rhinodermatidae

Rhinodermina Bonaparte, 1850, Conspect. Syst. Herpetol. Amph.: 1 p. Type genus: Rhinoderma Duméril and Bibron, 1841.

Rhinodermatidae — Günther, 1858, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1858: 346. Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357-364.

Rhinodermatinae — Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 506. Laurent, 1942, Bull. Mus. R. Hist. Nat. Belg., 18: 1-20.

English Names

Darwin's Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 114).

Mouth-breeding Frogs (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 135).

Mouth-brooding Frogs (Halliday and Adler, 2002, New Encyclop. Rept. Amph.: 85).

Distribution

Temperate forests of southern Chile and adjacent Argentina.

Comment

Lynch, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans: 131-182, suggested that Rhinoderma is the sister-taxon of Bufonidae, but presented no evidence for this conjecture. Formas, Pugin, and Jorquera, 1975, Physis, Buenos Aires, 34: 147-157, reviewed the literature and taxonomic status of the species. Formas, 1976, Experientia, 32: 1000-1002, discussed karyology and the enigmatic relationships of this group. Barrio and Rinaldi de Chieri, 1971, Physis, Buenos Aires, 30: 673-685, and Lavilla and Cei, 2001, Monogr. Mus. Reg. Sci. Nat. Torino, 28: 121, suggested that Rhinoderma is imbedded within Telmatobiinae (sensu viejo) of Leptodactylidae. Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 154, this taxon to be within Cycloramphidae Roelants, Gower, Wilkinson, Loader, Biju, Guillaume, Moriau, and Bossuyt, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104: 887-892, on the basis of less inclusive sampling, a moderately different molecular dataset, and a different analytical method than Frost et al. (2006) found Cycloramphidae to be polyphyletic, with Rhinoderma (their exemplar of Cyloramphinae) and Odontophrynus (their examplar of Alsodinae) to be far from each other phylogenetically. Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357-364, recognized Rhinodermatidae rather than Cycloramphidae for the clade containing Rhinoderma and did not address the position of Alsodes. Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357-364, suggested on the basis of the polyphyly posited in 2007 that Rhinodermatidae be recognized for Rhinoderma. Removed from the synonmy of Cycloramphidae by Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences recognized Rhinodermatidae to contain Rhinoderma and Insuetophrynus and forming a clade likely the sister taxon of Batrachylidae. See comments under Cycloramphidae and Ceratophryidae for discussion of the evolution of the systematics of this and related groups. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon.

Contained taxa

Insuetophrynus Barrio, 1970 (1 sp.)
Rhinoderma Duméril and Bibron, 1841 (2 sp.)

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