Ceratobatrachidae Boulenger, 1884

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ceratobatrachidae
104 species

Ceratobatrachidae Boulenger, 1884, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1884: 212. Type genus: Ceratobatrachus Boulenger, 1884.

Ceratobatrachinae — Gadow, 1901, Amphibia and Reptiles: 139, 237; Dubois, Ohler, and Biju, 2001, Alytes, 19: 55; Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 16; Scott, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 525.

Cornuferinae Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 521. Type genus: Cornufer Tschudi, 1838. See nomenclatural note under the Cornufer Tschudi record. 

Platymantinae Savage, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans: 354. Type genus: Platymantis Günther, 1859.

Ceratobatrachini — Dubois, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 231.

Ceratobatrachidae — 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: 236; Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357–364. 

Ceratobatracheidae — Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 235. Apofamily. 

Common Names

None noted.

Distribution

Fiji, Admirality and Bismarck Islands, Moluccas, and all of the Solomon Island chain (both the Solomons and Papua New Guinea), except for San Cristobal; Borneo (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei) and Palawan Island, Philippines; northern Myanmar, northeastern India, and adjacent China. 

Comment

Ceratobatrachidae corresponds reasonably closely to Cornuferinae of Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 521, and Platymantinae of later authors (e.g., Savage, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans), but with those genera excluded that exhibit free-living tadpoles (Amolops, Staurois, and Hylarana [sensu lato]). Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 313, recognized Ceratobatrachini within his Dicroglossinae (Ranidae), but later (Dubois, Ohler, and Biju, 2001, Alytes, 19: 305–352) considered Ceratobatrachinae to be a distinct subfamily of unclear relationship to Dicroglossinae. Dubois, 2003, in Duellman (ed.), Grzimek's Animal Life Enclop., 6(Amph.): 245–264, asserted that Ceratobatrachini is a tribe within Dicroglossinae. van der Meijden, Vences, Hoegg, and Meyer, 2005, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 37: 674–685, presented DNA sequence evidence that Ceratobatrachus is outside of Dicroglossinae, and Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 4, followed this by accepting the rank Ceratobatrachinae. Roelants, Jiang, and Bossuyt, 2004, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 31: 730–740, in a study of predominantly Indian taxa, provided molecular evidence supporting that Ingerana (Ingerana tenasserimensis) is in Occidozyginae, rather than Ceratobatrachinae, although Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 16; without discussion, did not accept this. 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: 136, reviewed the taxonomic history of this monophyletic group, provided a phylogenetic hypothesis, based on a large amount of DNA sequence data, of Ingerana [baluensis] + (Discodeles + (Ceratobatrachus + (Batrachylodes + Platymantis))), and considered it to be distantly related to other former ranids. Bossuyt, Brown, Hillis, Cannatella, and Milinkovitch, 2006, Syst. Biol., 55: 579–594, provided largely similar results, but although they placed Ingerana baluensis (the same exemplar used Frost et al., 2006) as the sister taxon of the remaining ceratobatrachids, their found Ingerana tenasserimensis (the type species of Ingerana) to be in Dicroglossidae and they found at least one species of nominal Platymantis (papuensis) far from other species of Platymantis, thereby suggesting the nonmonophyly of both Ceratobatrachidae and Platymantis. Although it is clear that at least Ingerana tenasserimensis should be in Dicroglossidae, it is not clear what component of "Ingerana" (including "Ingerana" baluensis) should remain in Ceratobatrachidae. For purposes of this catalog "Ingerana" baluensis has been retained in Ceratobatrachidae, incertae sedis, while the remaining species of Ingerana have been transferred to Occidozyginae (Dicroglossidae) pending additional research. Wiens, Sukumaran, Pyron, and Brown, 2009, Evolution, 63: 1217–1231, suggested phylogenetic structure within Ceratobrachidae (their Ceratobrachinae), although the phylogenetic placement of this taxon as the sister taxon of Ranixalinae lacks any confidence measure suggesting that this placement is poorly supported. Bossuyt and Roelants, 2009, in Hedges and Kumar (eds.), Timetree of Life: 357–364, considered this taxon a distinct family based on its Mesozoic origin. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed "Ingerana" baluensis as a ceratobatrachid and Ingerana to be a dicroglossid as well as providing a tree of their molecular exemplars. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148: 39–55, discussed briefly the taxonomic history of the group.  Vitt and Caldwell, 2014, Herpetology, 4th Ed., provided a summary of life history, diagnosis, and taxonomy. Brown, Siler, Richards, Diesmos, and Cannatella, 2015, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 174: 130–168, provided a molecular phylogeny and concordant classification of the family that is followed here. Yan, Jiang, Jin, Suwannapoom, Li, Vindum, Brown, and Che, 2016, Zool. Res., Kunming, 37: 7–14, redelimited the family by the addition of the subfamily Liuraninae, composed of species transferred from Dicroglossidae. Yuan, Zhang, Raxworthy, Weisrock, Hime, Jin, Lemmon, Lemmon, Holland, Kortyna, Zhou, Peng, Che, and Prendini, 2018, Natl. Sci. Rev., Beijing, 6: 10–14, reported on phylogenetics and biogeography as elements of Natatanura. Elias-Costa, Araujo-Vieira, and Faivovich, 2021, Cladistics, 37: 498–517, discussed the evolution of submandibular musculature optimized on the tree of Jetz and Pyron, 2018, Nature Ecol. & Evol., 2: 850–858, which provided morphological synapomorphies of this taxon.     

Contained taxa (104 sp.):

Alcalinae Brown, Siler, Richards, Diesmos, and Cannatella, 2015 (6 sp.)
Ceratobatrachinae Boulenger, 1884 (90 sp.)
Liuraninae Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010 (8 sp.)

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