Colostethus Cope, 1866

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Dendrobatoidea > Family: Dendrobatidae > Subfamily: Colostethinae > Genus: Colostethus
12 species

Colostethus Cope, 1866, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 18: 130. Type species: Phyllobates latinasus Cope, 1863, by original designation.

Prostherapis Cope, 1868, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 20: 96-140. Type species: Prostherapis inguinalis Cope, 1868, by monotypy. Synonymy with Phyllobates (sensu lato) by Cochran, 1966, Mem. Inst. Butantan, São Paulo, 33: 61-65. Synonymy with Colostethus by Savage, 1968, Copeia, 1968: 751; Edwards, 1971, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 84: 147-162; Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 165.

PrestherapisDonoso-Barros, 1965, Not. Mens. Mus. Nac. Hist. Nat. Santiago, 102: 1. Incorrect subsequent spelling of Prostherapis.

English Names

Rocket Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 48).

Distribution

Eastern two-thirds of Panama to throughout most of Andean Colombia, south to central Ecuador; isolated population in northern Peru.

Comment

See Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 1–268, for delimitation of this genus and its taxonomic history. Santos, Coloma, Summers, Caldwell, Ree, and Cannatella, 2009, PLoS Biol., 7(3: e1000056): 1–14, discussed phylogenetics and biogeography and suggested that Colostethus as currently recognized is paraphyletic with respect to Ameerega. In associated electronic text (Santos, Coloma, Summers, Caldwell, Ree, and Cannatella, 2009, PLoS Biol., 7(3)e56: 44), they restricted Colostethus to the group containing Colostethus latinasus (the type-species), while the group composed of Colostethus fraterdanieli, Colostethus argyrogaster and Colostethus fugax, was obtained as the sister taxon of Ameerega, rendering Colostethus (sensu lato) paraphyletic. They did not name the "Colostethus" group close to Ameerega, but presumably will in the future. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed the results of Santos et al., 2009, but did not remedy the paraphyly. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 130–131, provided a key to the species in Central America and provided a map and photographs of this species. Grant, Rada, Anganoy-Criollo, Batista, Dias, Jeckel, Machado, and Rueda-Almonacid, 2017, S. Am. J. Herpetol., 12 (Special Issue): 1–90, noted that the Colostethus ruthveni group (Colostethus ruthveni and an unnamed species) sits within Dendrobatinae. 

Contained taxa (12 sp.):

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