Nannophryne Günther, 1870, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1870: 402. Type species: Nannophryne variegata Günther, 1870, by monotypy.
None noted.
Central Andean Peru south in disjunct populations to southern Chile and adjacent Argentina.
Removed from the synonymy of Bufo by 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: 129, on the basis of evidence provided by Pauly, Hillis, and Cannatella, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2517-2535. Previously placed in the synonymy with Phryniscus (= Atelopus) by Boulenger, 1894, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 6, 14: 374; and with Bufo by Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 281. Pramuk, 2006, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 146: 425, placed Nannophryne cophotis (as Bufo cophotis), Nannophryne apolobambica (by implication), and Nannophryne corynetes (as Bufo corynetes) in her Bufo variegatus group (Nannophryne of this catalog). Chaparro, Pramuk, and Gluesenkamp, 2007, Herpetologica, 63: 203-212, recognized Nannophryne as the sister taxon of a group composed of other former South American "Bufo" as well various other Eurasian and African taxa (e.g., Duttaphrynus, Schismaderma, Ingerophrynus). Smith and Chiszar, 2006, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 1: 6-8, implied that this taxon should be considered a subgenus of Bufo; see comment under Bufonidae. Van Bocxlaer, Biju, Loader, and Bossuyt, 2009, BMC Evol. Biol., 9 (e131): 1-10, on the basis of a molecular study suggested that Nannophryne is the sister taxon of all bufonids, with the exception of Dendrophryniscus and Melanophryniscus (the atelopodines not having been included in their analysis). In a subsequent and more densely-sampled study Van Bocxlaer, Loader, Roelants, Biju, Menegon, and Bossuyt, 2010, Science, 327: 679-682, found Nannophryne to form the sister taxon of all bufonids, excluding Dendrophryniscus, Osornophryne, Atelopus, and Melanophryniscus. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their study of Genbank sequences, confirmed the monophyly of this taxon (although this is obscured by their explicit adoption of an out-dated and non-monophyletic taxonomy), and prior work regarding its phylogenetic placement.
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