Eleutherodactylidae Lutz, 1954

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Brachycephaloidea > Family: Eleutherodactylidae
242 species

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.

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.

Common Names

Rain Frogs (Vitt and Caldwell, 2014, Herpetology, 4th Ed.: 499).

Free-toed Frogs (Lemos-Espinal, Smith, and Valdes-Lares, 2019, Amph. Rept. Durango: 61).  

Great Caribbean Landfrogs Hedges, Powell, Henderson, Hanson, and Murphy, 2019, Caribb. Herpetol., 67: 9). 

Distribution

Central Texas (USA) and western Mexico south to Belize and Guatemala; extreme eastern Honduras south to central Panama on the Atlantic versant and on the Pacific versant of cental Panama; eastern Panama south along the Pacific versant through western Colombia to northwestern Ecuador; Amazonian Colombia, northeastern Peru and Brazil; eastern Venezuela through central Guyana, Surinam, and French Guinea to extreme northern Brazil; Great and Lesser Antilles. A few species introduced globally. 

Comment

This taxon is a monophyletic subset of the former leptodactylid subfamily Eleutherodactylinae plus Brachycephalidae as redelimited by Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008, Zootaxa, 1737: 1–182, and Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 1–132. Díaz and Cádiz, 2008, Guía Taxon. Anf. Cuba: 1–295, provided brief accounts for the Cuban species. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, provided a tree of molecular exemplars and considered Eleutherodactylidae the sister taxon of an enlarged Craugastoridae and confirmed the sister-taxon relationship of Eleutherodactylinae and Phyzelaphryninae. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148: 39–55, discussed briefly the taxonomic history of the group. Cole, Townsend, Reynolds, MacCulloch, and Lathrop, 2013, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 125: 317–578, provided identification keys and accounts for the species in Guyana. Vitt and Caldwell, 2014, Herpetology, 4th Ed., provided a summary of life history, diagnosis, and taxonomy. Rodriguez, Poth, Schulz, Gehara, and Vences, 2013, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 68: 541–554, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the Eleutherodactylus limbatus group. Taboada, Grant, Lynch, and Faivovich, 2013, Herpetologica, 69: 342–357, provided morphological synapomorphies for the Brachycephaloidea (= Terrarana) but could not find them for the contained Brachycephalidae, Craugastoridae, and Eleutherodactylidae. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 140–191, provided a key to the species of Eleutherodactylidae and Craugastoridae in Central America and provided maps and photographs of the species, including this one. Padial, Grant, and Frost, 2014, Zootaxa, 3825: 1–132, revised the family, species series and groups, and discussed its phylogenetics. Streicher, Miller, Guerrero, Correa-Quezada, Ortiz, Crawford, Pie, and Wiens, 2018, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 119: 128–143, reported on a molecular study of hyloid frogs, finding Brachycephalidae to be the sister taxon of Eleutherodactylidae + Craugastoridae, and part of a large monophyletic group composed of Brachycephaloidea, Allophrynidae, Centrolenidae, Dendrobatoideak Leptodactylidae, Odontophrynidae, and Bufonidae, which they termed Coummutabirana.  

Contained taxa (242 sp.):

Eleutherodactylinae Lutz, 1954 (228 sp.)
Phyzelaphryninae Hedges, Duellman, and Heinicke, 2008 (14 sp.)

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