Brachycephaloidea Günther, 1858

Common Names

None noted. 

Distribution

Southern Arizona, southeastern New Mexico, and central Texas (USA) south through Mexico and the Antilles and throughout South America except for the southern cone. 

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, noting grave instability at the level of family and suggesting that a more stable taxonomic arrangement would be to consider the current units (outlined by them) as subfamilies within a single family (presumably Brachycephalidae), but did not execute the taxonomic revision. Barrientos, Streicher, Miller, Pie, Wiens, and Crawford, 2021, Syst. Biodiversity, 19: 818–833, applied an enormous amount of molecular data to 16 ingroup species out of the 1198 named species that comprised Brachycephaloidea. That analysis produced a number of novel and more traditional relationships. The family relationships found were (Brachycephalidae, (Eleutherodactylidae, (Craugastoridae + ‘Strabomantidae’))), with Strabomantis being either the sister taxon of, or within,  Craugastor; this means that if their tree is correct Strabomantidae is paraphyletic with respect to Craugastoridae. In addition, their data suggest that Pristimantinae is paraphyletic with respect to Holoadeninae. While DRF does not dispute these results over this small number of terminals, there is a substantial body of literature (e.g., see above for citations to Wheeler, 1992; Hillis, 1996; Graybeal, 1998, Zwickl and Hillis, 2002, and Wheeler, 2007; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_branch_attraction) that suggests that above some minimal level of number of terminals and amount of data, that the number of terminals becomes ascendant in importance as it promotes the partition of long branches. So, while this is an extremely interesting paper, until the terminal density of this kind of analysis expands ca. 10x I'm (DRF) going to retain the existing classification for purposes of this catalog. 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. Ospina-Sarria and Grant, 2022, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 195: 976–994, reported on morphology of pelivic and thigh musculature and digital discs of the Brachycephaloidea, and identified unambiguous synapomorphies of subsidiary groups. Arroyo, Targino, Rueda-Solano, Daza-R., and Grant, 2022, Syst. Biodiversity, 20 (1: 2123865): 1–25, discussed the alternative topologies within Brachycephaloidea suggested by various authors and suggested on molecular grounds that Brachycephaloidea is the sister taxon of Hemiphractidae. Fouquet, Kok, Recoder, Prates, Camacho, Marques-Souza, Ghellere, McDiarmid, and Rodrigues, 2023, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 191 (107971): 1–11, provided a discussion of the relationships within Brachycephaloidea with the naming of two new families, Neblinaphrynidae and Caligophrynidae. 

Contained taxa (1280 sp.):

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