Pseudophilautus Laurent, 1943

English Names

Shrub-frogs (Manamendra-Arachchi and Pethiyagoda, 2005, Raffles Bull. Zool., Suppl., 12: 163 [as Philautus]).

Kirtisinghe's Oriental Shrub Frogs (Bossuyt and Dubois, 2001, Zeylanica, 6: 85).

Brown-eared Shub Frogs (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 12).

Distribution

Sri Lanka, and the Western Ghats of southwestern India.

Comment

Pseudophilautus was resurrected from the synonymy of Philautus by Li, Che, Murphy, Zhao, Zhao, Rao, and Zhang, 2009, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 53: 510, where it was placed by Inger, 1985, in Frost (ed.), Amph. Species World: 439; Bossuyt and Dubois, 2001, Zeylanica, 6: 6. Yu, Zhang, and Yang, 2010, Biochem. Syst. Ecol., 38: 402–409, presented molecular evidence that Pseudophilautus (in the sense of including what is now Raorchestes) extended from Sri Lanka to southeastern China; these authors also recognized the two major clades that would become in the same year the restricted Pseudophilautus, and a much larger Raorchestes, which included the bulk of the species from South India to southeastern China. Biju, Shouche, Dubois, Dutta, and Bossuyt, 2010, Curr. Sci., Bangalore, 98: 1120, restricted the concept of Pseudophilautus to the predominantly Sri Lankan clade, and transferred its putative sister taxon, the monophyletic group of India to southern China and Vietnam, to Raorchestes. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, provided a tree of examplar species and confirmed the placement of a monophyletic Pseudophilautus as the sister taxon of Raorchestes, but employed an antiquated taxonomy that obscures this result. Wickramasinghe, Vidanapathirana, Rajeev, Ariyarathne, Chanaka, Priyantha, Bandara, and Wickramasinghe, 2013, J. Threatened Taxa, 5: 3789–3920, provided tables of morphological comparisons to distinguish among the species. Li, Li, Klaus, Rao, Hillis, and Zhang, 2013, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 110: 3441–3446, provided a Bayesian tree of molecular evidence that suggests that Pseudophilautus is the sister taxon of Raorchestes + Kurixalus. Given the Kurixalus has free-living larvae and Raorchestes and Pseudophilautus (previously considered to form a monophyletic group) have direct development, this suggests that either direct development in Raorchestes and Pseudophilautus are not homologous, or that free-swimming larvae have redeveloped in Kurixalus (DRF, 21 May 2013). Meegaskumbura, Senevirathne, Manamendra-Arachchi, Pethiyagoda, Hanken, and Schneider, 2019 "2018", Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 132: 14–24, discussed phylogenetics and biogeography of Pseudophilautus and suggested that Raorchestes (direct development) is likely the sister taxon of Mercurana (larvae) and together the sister taxon of Pseudophilautus (direct development). Ellepola, Herath, Manamendra-Arachchi, Wijayathilaka, Senevirathne, Pethiyagoda, and Meegaskumbura, 2021, PLoS One, 16(10: e0258594): 1–17, reported on species delimitation in the genus on the basis of molecular evidence, noting 14 likely new species. 

Contained taxa (78 sp.):

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