Cophyla Boettger, 1880

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Microhylidae > Subfamily: Cophylinae > Genus: Cophyla
7 species

Cophyla Boettger, 1880, Zool. Anz., 3: 281. Type species: Cophyla phyllodactyla Boettger, 1880, by monotypy.

English Names

Whistling Treefrogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 89).

Distribution

Madagascar.

Comment

See account by Blommers-Schlösser and Blanc, 1991, Faune de Madagascar, 75: 88–90. Vences, Andreone, and Glaw, 2005, Afr. Zool., 40: 148, noted that the distinctiveness of this genus from Platypelis is arguable. Glaw and Vences, 2007, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Madagascar, Ed. 3: 138–139, provided accounts. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, suggested that Cophyla is the sister taxon of one clade of Plethodontohyla (see comment under that generic account). Rakotoarison, Crottini, Müller, Rödel, Glaw, and Vences, 2015, Zootaxa, 3937: 61–89, revised Cophyla and suggested that it is the monophyletic sister taxon of a monophyletic Platypelis. However in the taxon-dense tree (albeit less evidence-density) Platypelis is paraphyletic with respect to Cophyla, and in the tree where the number of Cophyla species is reduced (although with more loci) Platypelis is monophyletic, suggesting that the jury is still out on mutual monophyly of these two genera (DRF). Peloso, Frost, Richards, Rodrigues, Donnellan, Matsui, Raxworthy, Biju, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Wheeler, 2016, Cladistics, 32: 113–140, found Platypelis to be paraphyletic with respect to Cophyla and synonymized the genera. See accounts of former Platypelis by Blommers-Schlösser and Blanc, 1991, Faune de Madagascar, 75: 70–87, and Glaw and Vences, 2007, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Madagascar, Ed. 3: 132–137, and who noted that many unnamed species are contained within this genus.

Anilany was placed in the synonymy of Rhombophryne by Peloso, Raxworthy, Wheeler, and Frost, 2017, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 111: 63; resurrected by Tu, Yang, Liang, and Zhang, 2018, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 126: 85–91 who placed it as the sister taxon as Stumpffia, as did the original publication. Considered part of Cophyla by Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 462. 

Contained taxa (7 sp.):

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