Brachycephaloidea Günther, 1858

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Brachycephaloidea
1187 species

Brachycephalina Günther, 1858, Arch. Naturgesch., 24: 321. Type genus: Brachycephalus Fitzinger, 1826. Not explicitly stated to be a family-group name, but given that it is the only collective immediately above the genus, I (DRF) interpret this as a family-group name. 

Brachycephalina Günther, 1858, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1858: 344. Explicit Section, either in the family-group or above, but most likely above the family-group. See synonymy under Anura. 

Brachycephalidae — Günther, 1858, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1858: 347; 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: 197.

Brachycephalinae — Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 507; Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 11.

Eleutherodactylinae Lutz, 1954, Mem. Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, 52: 157. Type genus: Eleutherodactylus Duméril and Bibron, 1841. Synonymy with Brachycephalina Günther, 1858, by Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 11;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: 197.

Eleutherodactylini — Lynch, 1969, Final PhD Exam, Program: 3; Lynch, 1971, Misc. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 53: 142.

Eleutherodactylinae — Laurent, 1980 "1979", Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 104: 418; Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 49.

Eleutherodactylidae — Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 47.

Craugastoridae Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 1. Type genus: Craugastor Cope, 1862, by original designation.

Craugastorinae — Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 565.

Strabomantidae Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 95. Type genus: Strabomantis Peters, 1863, by original designation. Synonymy by Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 52. 

Strabomantinae — Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 103. 

Brachycephaloidea — Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 49. Explicit superfamily to include Brachycephalidae, Craugastoridae, and Eleutherodactylidae. 

Eleutherodactyloidia — Fouquette and Dubois, 2014, Checklist N.A. Amph. Rept.: 273. Explicit epifamily, coined to be equivalent of the suprafamilial unranked taxon Terrarana Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 21.

English Names

None noted. 

Distribution

Southern Arizona and central Texas (USA) south through Mexico and the Antilles to southern South America. 

Comment

The explicit superfamily Brachycephaloidea was coined by Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 49, to include Brachycephalidae, Craugastoridae, and Eleutherodactylidae, families that were not diagnosed from each other on the basis of morphology. These authors also included Geobatrachus and Atopophrynus within the superfamily but could not assign them to family. On the basis of mtDNA genomes, but single terminals per family, Pie, Ströher, Bornschein, Ribeiro, Faircloth, and McCormack, 2017, Biochem. Syst. Ecol., 71: 26–31, suggested that the topology is Eleutherodactylus + (Craugastoridae + Brachycephalidae) rather than the previously thought Brachycephalidae + (Craugastoridae + Eleutherodactylidae). Heinicke, Lemmon, Lemmon, McGrath, and Hedges, 2017 "2018", Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 118: 145–155, provided a study of a very large number of nucleotides, but only 30 ingroup taxa analysed via ML and coalescent species tree methods that largely corroborates the study of Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 1–182. However, the low number of ingroup taxa compared to those included by Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, and Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 1–132, renders their conclusions problematic inasmuch as taxon sampling density is hugely important (see Wheeler, 1992, Extinct. Cladistic Analysis: 205–215, Hillis, 1996, Nature, 383: 383, Graybeal, 1998, Syst. Biol., 47: 9–17, Zwickl and Hillis, 2002, Syst. Biol., 51: 588–598, and Wheeler, 2007, in Hodkinson and Parnell (eds.), Reconstruct. Tree of Life). Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 1–738, provided a tree largely consistent with earlier ML trees. Motta, Taucce, Haddad, and Canedo, 2021, J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 59: 663–679, provided a taxon and terminal-dense study and discussed the seemingly inherent instability of the tree and its emergent taxonomy. The authors recommended informally a taxonomy that is followed here in that it recognizes the stable units within the Brachycephaloidea. 

Contained taxa (1187 sp.):

Atopophrynus Lynch and Ruiz-Carranza, 1982 (1 sp.)
Brachycephalidae Günther, 1858 (75 sp.)
Craugastoridae Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008 (877 sp.)
Eleutherodactylidae Lutz, 1954 (233 sp.)
Geobatrachus Ruthven, 1915 (1 sp.)

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