Batrachuperus Boulenger, 1878

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Hynobiidae > Subfamily: Hynobiinae > Genus: Batrachuperus
7 species

Desmodactylus David, 1873 "1872", J. N. China Branch R. Asiat. Soc., N.S., 7: 226. Type species: Desmodactylus pinchonii David, 1873 "1872", by monotypy. Synonymy by Stejneger, 1925, Proc. U.S. Natl. Mus., 66: 5. Secondary homonym of Desmodactylus Duméril, Bibron, and Duméril, 1854, a substitute name for Hemidactylium Tschudi, 1838 (Plethodontidae)

Batrachuperus Boulenger, 1878, Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 3: 71. Type species: Salamandrella sinensis Sauvage, 1876 (= Dermodactylus pinchonii David, 1872 "1871"), by monotypy.

BatrachyperusBoulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Grad. Batr. Apoda Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 37. Unjustified emendation.

Tibetuperus Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 77-161. Type genus: Batrachuperus yenyuanensis Liu, 1950. Coined as a subgenus of Batrachuperus.

English Names

Mountain Salamanders (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 28; Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 9).

Stream Salamanders (Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 9).

Distribution

Western China and adjacent Myanmar.

Comment

Chinese species discussed by Fei, Ye, and Tian, 1983, Acta Zootaxon. Sinica, 8: 209-219. Fu, Wang, Zeng, Liu, and Zheng, 2001, Copeia, 2001: 1100-1107, discussed molecular phylogenetics of the Batrachuperus of eastern China. See Thorn and Raffaëlli, 2000, Salamand. Ancien Monde: 107-124, for accounts of most species. Larson, Weisrock, and Kozak, 2003, in Sever (ed.), Reprod. Biol. Phylogeny Urodela: 43, suggested that this taxon is polyphyletic, with Zhang, Chen, Zhou, Liu, Wang, Papenfuss, Wake, and Qu, 2006, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 103: 7360-7365, subsequently partitioning Paradactylodon out of Batrachuperus. Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, in Fei et al. (eds.), Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 36-37, provided a key to the species of China. Fu and Zeng, 2008, Mol. Ecol., 17: 1469-1488, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the species. Chen, Wang, Liu, Xie, and Jiang, 2011, Curr. Zool., Chengdu, 57: 785805, reported on a tree of 11 protein-coding mtDNA genes that place Batrachuperus as the sister taxon of Pseudohynobius + Liua. Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 155, named a new subgenus, Tibetuperus, for Batrachuperus yenyuanensis, a pointless nomenclatural act which renders the coordinate subgenus Batrachuperus paraphyletic and therefore misleads about phylogenetic relationship. Sparreboom, 2014, Salamanders Old World: 39–50, reviewed the biology, characteristics, distribution, reproduction, and conservation of the species.  Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 238–253, provided a key, accounts, photographs, and range maps (for China) for the species. These authors also recognized two species groups: the Batrachuperus tibetanus group (Batrachuperus yenyuanensis, Batrachuperus tibetanus, and Batrachuperus cochranae) and the Batrachuperus pinchonii group (Batrachuperus londongensis, Batrachuperus pinchonii). Xiong, Luo, and Zeng, 2020, Zool. Res., Kunming, 41: 589–594, provided a key to the species. Che, Jiang, Yan, and Zhang, 2020, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 56, provided a molecular tree of Batrachuperus which implied a number of unnamed lineages. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 55–62, provided species accounts, covering systematics, life history, and distribution (including a polygon map). 

Contained taxa (7 sp.):

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