Nannophryne Günther, 1870

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Bufonidae > Genus: Nannophryne
4 species

Nannophryne Günther, 1870, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1870: 402. Type species: Nannophryne variegata Günther, 1870, by monotypy.

Common Names

None noted.

Distribution

Central Andean Peru south in disjunct populations to southern Chile and adjacent Argentina.

Comment

Removed from the synonymy of Bufo by 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: 129, on the basis of evidence provided by Pauly, Hillis, and Cannatella, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2517–2535. Previously placed in the synonymy with Phryniscus (= Atelopus) by Boulenger, 1894, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 6, 14: 374; and with Bufo by Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 281. Pramuk, 2006, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 146: 425, placed Nannophryne cophotis (as Bufo cophotis), Nannophryne apolobambica (by implication), and Nannophryne corynetes (as Bufo corynetes) in her Bufo variegatus group (Nannophryne of this catalog). Chaparro, Pramuk, and Gluesenkamp, 2007, Herpetologica, 63: 203–212, recognized Nannophryne as the sister taxon of a group composed of other former South American "Bufo" as well various other Eurasian and African taxa (e.g., Duttaphrynus, Schismaderma, Ingerophrynus). 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. Van Bocxlaer, Biju, Loader, and Bossuyt, 2009, BMC Evol. Biol., 9 (e131): 1–10, on the basis of a molecular study suggested that Nannophryne is the sister taxon of all bufonids, with the exception of Dendrophryniscus and Melanophryniscus (the atelopodines not having been included in their analysis). In a subsequent and more densely-sampled study Van Bocxlaer, Loader, Roelants, Biju, Menegon, and Bossuyt, 2010, Science, 327: 679–682, found Nannophryne to form the sister taxon of all bufonids, excluding Dendrophryniscus, Osornophryne, Atelopus, and Melanophryniscus. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed the monophyly of this taxon (although this is obscured by their explicit adoption of an out-dated and non-monophyletic taxonomy), and prior work regarding its phylogenetic placement. Fouquette and Dubois, 2014, Checklist N.A. Amph. Rept.: 290, considered Nannophryne as subgenus of Bufo, cherry-picking their citation to literature (excluding any reference to  Van Bocxlaer, Biju, Loader, and Bossuyt, 2009, BMC Evol. Biol., 9 (e131): 1–10, Van Bocxlaer, Loader, Roelants, Biju, Menegon, and Bossuyt, 2010, Science, 327: 679–682, or Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, which provided results not congruent with the story that Fouquette and Dubois wanted to tell) to avoid recognizing that treating this genus as a subgenus of Bufo also requires under current understanding of phylogeny all Old-World bufonids, such as Sabahphrynus, Nectophryne, and Ansonia to be treated as subgenera of Bufo as well. 

Contained taxa (4 sp.):

Nannophryne apolobambica (De la Riva, Ríos, and Aparicio, 2005)
Nannophryne cophotis (Boulenger, 1900)
Nannophryne corynetes (Duellman and Ochoa-M., 1991)
Nannophryne variegata Günther, 1870

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