Hylodidae Günther, 1858

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Hylodidae
48 species

English Names

Giant Neotropical Torrent Frogs (de Sá, Condez, Lyra, Haddad, and Malagoli, 2022, Syst. Biodiversity, 20 (1: 2039318): 1). 

Distribution

Northwestern Brazil to southern Brazil and northern Argentina.

Comment

See Savage, 1986, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 99: 42–45, for discussion of family-group nomenclature. In earlier literature frequently referred to as Elosiinae. Laurent, 1986, in Grassé and Delsol (eds.), Traite de Zool., 14: 691–693, included the genera Craspedoglossa, Cycloramphus, Paratelmatobius, Scythrophrys, Thoropa, and Zachaenus, with the genera considered to be in Elosiinae by Lynch, 1971, to be in the subfamily Grypiscinae Mivart, 1869 (= Cycloramphinae Bonaparte, 1850); these are now included in, respectively, Leptodactylidae (Paratelmatobius, Scythrophrys) and Cycloramphidae (Thoropa and Zachaenus). Haas, 2003, Cladistics, 19: 23–89, provided evidence from larval morphology that suggests strongly that this group was paraphyletic with respect to the Dendrobatidae, with Hylodes, in particular, being the sister taxon of Dendrobatidae. Nuin and Val, 2005, Amphibia-Reptilia, 26: 139–148, provided a phylogenetic analysis of the group, based on morphology, resulting in the topology Megaelosia + (Crossodactylus + Hylodes), with all three genera being monophyletic. 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: 210, considered Hylodidae to be a subfamily of their Cycloramphidae, but on the basis of additional evidence, Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 156, suggested that Hylodidae is the sister taxon of Dendrobatoidea and distantly related to Cycloramphidae. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, suggested that Hylodidae is the sister taxon of Alsodidae and far from Dendrobatoidea. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148: 39–55, discussed briefly the taxonomic history of the group. Lala and Rocha, 2012, Zoologia, Curitiba, 29: 89–94, reviewed the literature of larval morphology and adult description rates. Vitt and Caldwell, 2014, Herpetology, 4th Ed., provided a summary of biology, diagnosis, and range. Grant, Rada, Anganoy-Criollo, Batista, Dias, Jeckel, Machado, and Rueda-Almonacid, 2017, S. Am. J. Herpetol., 12 (Special Issue): 1–90, corroborated the placement of this family as the sister taxon of Alsodidae. Elias-Costa, Montesinos, Grant, and Faivovich, 2017, J. Morphol., 278: 1506–1516, reported on vocal sac anatomy, identifying synapomorphies of the family. Streicher, Miller, Guerrero, Correa-Quezada, Ortiz, Crawford, Pie, and Wiens, 2018, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 119: 128–143, provided a large molecular tree suggesting that Hylodidae is the sister taxon of Alsodidae and together with Batrachylidae and Cycloramphidae, forming a monophyletic group, their Neoaustrarana. de Sá, Condez, Lyra, Haddad, and Malagoli, 2022, Syst. Biodiversity, 20 (1: 2039318): 1–31, provided a revision of the family, based on molecular and morphological evidence, producing a topology of the genera Crossodactylus + (Phantasmarana + (Hylodes + Megaelosia)). Elias-Costa, Araujo-Vieira, and Faivovich, 2021, Cladistics, 37: 498–517, discussed the evolution of submandibular musculature optimized on the tree of Jetz and Pyron, 2018, Nature Ecol. & Evol., 2: 850–858, which provided morphological synapomorphies of this taxon.  

Contained taxa (48 sp.):

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