Oreolalax Myers and Leviton, 1962

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Megophryidae > Subfamily: Leptobrachiinae > Genus: Oreolalax
19 species

Oreolalax Myers and Leviton, 1962, Copeia, 1962: 289. Type species: Scutiger pingii Liu, 1943, by original designation. See comment.

Scutiger (Oreolalax)Dubois, 1979, Rev. Suisse Zool., 86: 631-640. Placement as a subgenus of Scutiger.

Aelurolalax Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 14. Type species: Megalophrys weigoldi Vogt, 1924, by original designation. Proposed as a subgenus of Scutiger. Synonymy by Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 68; Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 13.

Atympanolalax Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 489. Type species: Scutiger rugosa Liu, 1943, by original designation. Coined as a subgenus of Oreolalax

English Names

None noted.

Distribution

Southwestern China and adjacent Myanmar and Vietnam, possibly into adjacent Laos; population, unassigned to species from Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India.

Comment

Dubois, 1979, Rev. Suisse Zool., 86: 631-640, considered Oreolalax a subgenus (followed by Dubois, 1980, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 49: 478); this was followed by Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 14-23, who recognized three subgenera: Aeleurolalax (monotypic for Scutiger weigoldi), Scutiger, and Oreolalax. Oreolalax was subsequently treated as distinct by Zhao and Adler, 1993, Herpetol. China: 121-123, and by Fu, Lathrop, and Murphy, 1997, Asiat. Herpetol. Res., 7: 32-37. For purposes of this list Oreolalax is treated as a genus. A key to the species of Oreolalax (excluding Oreolalax chintingensis) was supplied by Wu, Zhao, Inger, and Shaffer, 1993, J. Herpetol., 27: 410-413. Fu and Murphy, 1997, Asiat. Herpetol. Res., 7: 38-43, discussed phylogeny in the genus. Dubois and Ohler, 1998, Dumerilia, 4:14, suggested that this taxon might be a subgenus of Xenophrys if the latter were considered of generic rank. Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, in Fei et al. (eds.), Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 57- 61, provided a key to the species. Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 12, recognized Oreolalax as a genus, but noted that it is delimited on characters primitive for their Oreolalagini and plesiomorphic with respect to Scutiger. Fu, Weadick, and Bi, 2007, J. Zool., London, 273: 315-325, suggested that Leptobrachium is the sister taxon of Vibrissaphora, and that Oreolalax and Scutiger are, respectively, more distant neighbors. Wei, Li, Xu, and Jiang, 2007, Chinese J. Zool., 42: 169-173, reviewed the genus. Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2009, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 2: 84-165, provided a key to the species groups and species, and accounts for all species. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, confirmed the position of Oreolalax as the sister taxon of Scutiger and provided a tree of their exemplar species. Nguyen, Phung, Le, Ziegler, and Böhme, 2013, Copeia, 2013: 213-222, provided a molecular tree of some of the species. Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 486–538, reviewed the species of China, provided an accounts, photographs, and dot maps. Roy, Begum, and Ahmed, 2019, J. Threatened Taxa, 10: 12943, noted a specimen of Oreolalax sp. from Ikindi, Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India, that may represent an unnamed species or a range extension of one of the Chinese species. Huang, Cui, Li, Fan, Yang, Yang, Ni, Li, Yao, Xu, Zeng, Li, Sun, and Zhang, 2020, MtDNA, Part B, 5: 1117–1118, provided a mtDNA neighbor-joining tree of the species. 

Contained taxa (19 sp.):

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