Oreophryne Boettger, 1895

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Microhylidae > Subfamily: Asterophryinae > Genus: Oreophryne
73 species

Oreophryne Boettger, 1895, Zool. Anz., 18: 135. Type species: Oreophryne senckenbergiana Boettger, 1895 (= Microhyla achatina var. moluccensis Peters and Doria, 1878), by monotypy. Placed on Official List of Generic Names in Zoology by Opinion 1266, Anonymous, 1984, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 41: 12.

Mehelyia Wandolleck, 1911 "1910", Abh. Ber. Zool. Anthropol. Ethnograph. Mus. Dresden, 13: 7. Type species: Meheylia lineata Wandolleck, 1911 (= Sphenophryne biroi Méhely, 1897), by subsequent designation of Parker, 1934, Monogr. Frogs Fam. Microhylidae: 159. Synonymy by Nieden, 1926, Das Tierreich, 49: 38; Parker, 1934, Monogr. Frogs Fam. Microhylidae: 159.

English Names

Cross Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 91).

Distribution

Southern Philippine Islands, Sulwesi, and the Lesser Sunda Islands to New Guinea and New Britain.

Comment

See comment under Cophixalus. Placed on the Official List of Generic Names in Zoology by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, 1984, Opinion 1266, Anonymous, 1984, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 41: 12–14. Köhler and Günther, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 47: 353–365, suggested on the basis of molecular evidence that this taxon is monophyletic and the sister taxon of a taxon composed of a piece of "Cophixalus" (see comment under Cophixalus) and Barygenys. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, in their molecular study, found Cophixalus balbus imbedded within this taxon. Wanger, Motzke, Saleh, and Iskandar, 2011, Salamandra, 47: 17–29, reported two unnamed species from central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Rivera, Kraus, Allison, and Butler, 2017, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 112: 1–11, questioned the monophyly of this taxon.; Tu, Yang, Liang, and Zhang, 2018, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 126: 87, provided a molecular tree that suggested that Oreophryne is composed of three phylogenetic units: (1) Oreophryne anulata, Oreophryne pseudasplenicola, and Oreophryne asplenicola, which forms the sister taxon of remaining asterophrynines with the exception of Gastrophrynoides; (2) a group composed of Oreophryne wapoga and Oreophryne atrigularis, which is imbedded in Cophixalus; and (3) a group containing the bulk of the rest of the species which is paraphyletic with respect to Paedophryne and AphantophryneDubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 418, 521, placed Oreophryne into the synonymy of Asterophrys due to the chaotic nature of so many of the nominal genera in this subfamily. Nevertheless, it seems that a better solution is not to move 343 species temporarily into one genus, but to wait, at least for a while, to see if anyone is attempting to resolve the problem. But, given the amount of talking I've heard about resolving the "Litoria" problem with no clear progress, I suspect that in a year I will be making this wholesale change. 

Contained taxa (73 sp.):

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