Ansonia Stoliczka, 1870

Common Names

Stream Toads (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 38).

Distribution

Northwestern Thailand and adjacent Myanmar; Malay Peninsula; Tioman Is.; Sumatra and Borneo; Mindanao (Philippines).

Comment

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: 363, suggested, on the basis of DNA sequence data, that Ansonia is related to the African genera Nectophrynoides and Didynamipus. Graybeal and Cannatella, 1995, Herpetologica, 51: 121, suggested evidence supporting the monophyly of this taxon. See Inger, 1960, Fieldiana, Zool., 39: 473–503, for discussion, key, and accounts. Dring, 1979, Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Zool., 34: 181–244, discussed Malayan populations. See Daniel, 1963, J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 60: 430–431, for characterizations of, and key to, species of India. Inger and Dring, 1988, Malayan Nat. J., 41: 461–471, provided accounts for the species allied to Ansonia leptopus (Ansonia leptopus, Ansonia longidigita, and Ansonia spinulifer). Manthey and Grossmann, 1997, Amph. Rept. Südostasiens: 27–30, provided accounts and keys to the species of the Sunda Shelf. Malkmus, Manthey, Vogel, Hoffmann, and Kosuch, 2002, Amph. Rept. Mount Kinabalu: 63–75, provided a key to the species of Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. Grismer, 2006, Zootaxa, 1327: 1327: 1–27, discussed the species of West Malaysia. Grismer, 2006, Herpetologica, 62: 466–475, provided comparative morphological data for the species. Smith and Chiszar, 2006, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 1: 6–8, implied that this taxon should be considered a subgenus of Bufo; see comment under Bufonidae. Wood, Grismer, Ahmad, and Senawi, 2008, Herpetologica, 64: 321-340, provided a key to the species of West Malaysia. Van Bocxlaer, Biju, Loader, and Bossuyt, 2009, BMC Evol. Biol., 9 (e131): 1–10, provided evidence that Ansonia is polyphyletic, with Ansonia ornata (now Blaira ornata) falling as the sister taxon of a clade composed of Duttaphrynus + Adenomus + "Pedostibes" tuberculosus and with Pedostibes proper forming a monophyletic group as the sister taxon of Pelophryne. Haas, Wolter, Hertwig, and Das, 2009, Zootaxa, 2302: 1–18, provided a larval key to the species of Borneo. Matsui, Tominaga, Liu, Khonsue, Grismer, Diesmos, Das, Sudin, Yambun Imbun, Yong, Sukumaran, and Brown, 2010, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 54: 561–570, reported on molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of the genus and suggested its monophyly, employing Dendrobates (Dendrobatidae) as the single out-taxon, although the species suggested by Van Bocxlaer, Biju, Loader, and Bossuyt, 2009, BMC Evol. Biol., 9 (e131): 1–10, to render the genus paraphyletic, "Ansonia" ornata (now Blaira ornata), was not included in their analysis. The results otherwise were roughly comparable, although taxon sampling in the Matsui et al (2010) was substantially denser. Van Bocxlaer, Loader, Roelants, Biju, Menegon, and Bossuyt, 2010, Science, 327: 679–682, provided a dense analysis and found Ansonia (sensu stricto) to form the sister taxon of Pelophryne. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed the monophyly of this taxon, its placement as the sister taxon of Pelophryne, and provided a tree of exemplar species. Sanguila, Siler, Diesmos, Nuñeza, and Brown, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 333–350, reported on the phylogeography of species on Mindanao. Chan, Wood, Anuar, Muin, Quah, Sumarli, and Grismer, 2014, Zootaxa, 3764: 427–440, discussed and mapped the species of peninsular Malaysia. Hertwig, Min, Haas, and Das, 2014, Zootaxa, 3814: 419–431, provided some molecular phylogenetic insight into the genus as did Davis, Grismer, Klabacka, Muin, Quah, Anuar, Wood, and Sites, 2016, Zootaxa, 4103: 137–153. Waser, Schweizer, Haas, Das, Jankowski, Min, and Hertwig, 2017, Organisms Divers. Evol., 17: 287–303, reported on the phylogenetics of the genus with special reference to the species of Borneo. Grismer, Wood, Aowphol, Cota, Grismer, Murdoch, Aguilar, and Grismer, 2017 "2016", Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 120: 1–25, reported on the molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of the species. Ong and Das, 2019, Herpetol. Rev., 50: 445–449, discussed the advertisement calls of the Bornean species. Bedoya, Nuñeza, Amparado, Torres, and Leaño, 2019, IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth & Environm. Sci., 528 (012019): 1–7, in a study of call variation among and within Ansonia species on Mindanao, Philippines, discovered what may be an unnamed species. Suwannapoom, Grismer, Pawangkhanant, Naiduangchan, Yushchenko, Arkhipov, Wilkinson, and Poyarkov, 2021, Vert. Zool., Senckenberg, 71: 763–779, discussed the molecular phylogenetics and biogeography with special reference to the Thai-Burmese clade. Suwannapoom, Grismer, Pawangkhanant, and Poyarkov, 2022, Zootaxa, 5168: 119–136, also reported on the molecular and morphological systematics of the Thai-Burmese clade of Ansonia. 

Contained taxa (38 sp.):

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