Schismaderma Smith, 1849

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Bufonidae > Genus: Schismaderma
2 species

Schismaderma Smith, 1849, Illust. Zool. S. Afr., 3 (Part 28, Errata sheet): 1 p. and Smith, 1849, Illust. Zool. S. Afr., 3 (Appendix): 28. Type species: Schismaderma lateralis Smith, 1849 (= Bufo carens Smith, 1848), by monotypy.

Common Names

African Split-skin Toads (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 45).

Red Toads (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 44).

Distribution

Tanzania and southeastern Dem. Rep. Congo through eastern Angola to northeastern Northern Cape Province (Rep. South Africa).

Comment

Equivalent to the Bufo carens group of Tandy and Keith, 1972, in Blair (ed.), Evol. Genus Bufo: 158. Removed from the synonymy of Bufo by Van Dijk, 1966, Ann. Natal Mus., 18: 248. 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, suggested on the basis of DNA sequence data that Schismaderma is the sister taxon of Peltophryne. Chaparro, Pramuk, and Gluesenkamp, 2007, Herpetologica, 63: 203–212, and Pramuk, Robertson, Sites, and Noonan, 2008, Global Ecol. Biogeograph., 17: 72–83, suggested that Schismaderma is the sister taxon of Duttaphrynus. 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, suggested on the basis of molecular data that Schismaderma is the sister taxon of Churamiti + Nectophrynoides. In a subsequent, more densely-sampled analysis, Van Bocxlaer, Loader, Roelants, Biju, Menegon, and Bossuyt, 2010, Science, 327: 679–682, found Schismaderma to be phylogenetically isolated, but still possibly related to Churamiti + Nectophrynoides. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, came to results similar to that of Van Bocxlaer et al., 2010 (although this is difficult to see because the Pyron and Wiens explicitly adopted a non-monophyletic taxonomy) with the exception that they found the immediate sister taxon to be Bufotes. Marques, Ceríaco, Blackburn, and Bauer, 2018, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Ser. 4, 65 (Suppl. II): 69, provided a map for Angola and discussed the literature. 

Contained taxa (2 sp.):

Schismaderma branchi Baptista, Vaz Pinto, Keates, Edwards, Rödel, and Conradie, 2021
Schismaderma carens (Smith, 1848)

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