Rhaebo Cope, 1862

Common Names

Cope Toads (Kok and Kalamandeen, 2008, Intr. Taxon. Amph. Kaieteur Natl. Park: 124).

Distribution

Eastern Honduras to northern and western Colombia, northwestern Ecuador, and northwestern Venezuela; Amazonian lowlands of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil; the Guyanas.

Comment

Delimited and 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: 214, where it had been placed by Keferstein, 1867, Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen, 18: 353–354 (as a subgenus of Bufo); Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 281; and (Phrynomorphus) Kellogg, 1932, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 160: 28.: 358. The literature of these species is so intertwined with Bufo that the Bufonidae account should be inspected for relevant regional literature. Lynch, 2006, Caldasia, 28: 137, discussed misidentifications among species in Colombia. Rhaebo is the former Bufo guttatus group of Blair, 1972, Evol. Genus Bufo: 346. Pramuk, 2006, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 146: 407–452, provided evidence that Rhaebo (as the Bufo guttatus group) is phylogenetically far removed from other South American "Bufo". This was corroborated by Chaparro, Pramuk, and Gluesenkamp, 2007, Herpetologica, 63: 203–212, Pramuk, Robertson, Sites, and Noonan, 2008, Global Ecol. Biogeograph., 17: 72–83, and 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, suggested that Rhaebo is the sister taxon of Peltophryne. Mueses-Cisneros, 2009 "2008", Herpetotropicos, Mérida, 5: 29–48, implied that Andinophryne may be related to this taxon. 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. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed the monophyly of this taxon (although this is difficult to see because the authors explicitly adopted a non-monophyletic and out-dated taxonomy), provided a tree for their exemplar species, and suggested that it sits deeply within the bufonid tree, far from nominal Bufo. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 115, provided a summary of natural history, range map, and photograph of the species in Central America.  Ron, Mueses-Cisneros, Gutiérrez-Cárdenas, Rojas-Rivera, Lynch, Rocha, and Galarza, 2015, Zootaxa, 3947: 347–366, noted that recognition of Andinophryne rendered Rhaebo paraphyletic; on this basis they placed Andinophryne into the synonymy of Rhaebo. Previously, Graybeal and Cannatella, 1995, Herpetologica, 51: 122, suggested that there is no evidence in support of the monophyly of Andinophryne. Pereyra, Blotto, Baldo, Chaparro, Ron, Elias-Costa, Iglesias, Venegas, Thomé, Ospina-Sarria, Maciel, Rada, Kolenc, Borteiro, Rivera-Correa, Rojas-Runjaic, Moravec, De la Riva, Wheeler, Castroviejo-Fisher, Grant, Haddad, and Faivovich, 2021, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 447: 37, provided evidence for the paraphyly of Rhaebo. 

Contained taxa (12 sp.):

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