Leptobrachella Smith, 1925

Common Names

Borneo Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 85).

Slender-armed Frogs (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 106; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 5).

Asian Toads (Leptolalax [no longer recognized]: Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 86).

Metacarpal-tuberculed Toads (Leptolalax [no longer recognized]: Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 592). 

Distribution

Southern China, northeastern India, and Myanmar through Thailand and Vietnam to Malaya and Borneo and Natuna Island.

Comment

Leptobrachella (prior to the synonymy of Leptolalax) was reviewed by Dring, 1983, Amphibia-Reptilia, 4: 89-102. Inger and Stuebing, 1992 "1991", Raffles Bull. Zool., 39: 102, and Malkmus, Manthey, Vogel, Hoffmann, and Kosuch, 2002, Amph. Rept. Mount Kinabalu: 89, provided a key to the species of Leptobrachella of Borneo, prior to the synonymy of Leptolalax. Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 13, provided characters suggested to be apomorphic with respect to Leptolalax, its purported sister taxon. Leptobrachella (in the sense of not including Leptolalax) was addressed by Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583. Matsui, Eto, Nishikawa, Hamidy, Belabut, Ahmad, Panha, Khonsue, and Grismer, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 36: 11–21, also presented an mtDNA tree of Leptobrachella and Leptolalax, finding the Leptobrachella imbedded within Leptolalax. Leptolalax was originally named as a subgenus of Leptobrachium, the rank of the taxon was elevated to generic status by Dubois, 1983, Alytes, 2: 147–153. Inger, Stuebing, and Tan, 1995, Raffles Bull. Zool., 43: 115–131, provided discussion of two distinctive, but unnamed populations of Leptolalax, from Borneo. Lathrop, 1997, Asiat. Herpetol. Res., 7: 68–79, noted that Leptolalax lacked any identifiable apomorphies. Malkmus, Manthey, Vogel, Hoffmann, and Kosuch, 2002, Amph. Rept. Mount Kinabalu: 98, provided a key to the species of Leptolalax of Borneo. Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 14, provided characters suggested to be apomorphic to diagnose Leptolalax with respect to Leptobrachella. Within Leptolalax, Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2006, Alytes, 24: 14–15, recognized two nominal subgenera, Lalax, suggested to be diagnosed on apomorphies, and Leptolalax, the plesiomorphic residue of the genus Leptolalax, once Lalax (now Lalos) is recognized. Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2009, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 2: 298–328, provided a key and accounts for the Chinese species of Leptolalax, as Paramegophrys. Das, Tron, Rangad, and Hooroo, 2010, Zootaxa, 2339: 49, summarized the taxonomy of Leptolalax and ranges of the species as known at that time. Das and Deuti, 2011, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 30: 69–73, provided comparative data for the species of Leptolalax known at the time. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, did not address Leptolalax. Ohler, Wollenberg, Grosjean, Hendrix, Vences, Ziegler, and Dubois, 2011, Zootaxa, 3147: 1–83, reviewed and revised the subgenus Lalos. Sung, Yang, and Wang, 2014, Asian Herpetol. Res., 5: 80–90, provided a molecular tree of a selection of species of Leptolalax. Poyarkov, Rowley, Gogoleva, Vassilieva, Galoyan, and Orlov, 2015, Zootaxa, 3931: 221–252, provided a Bayesian inference dendrogram of the species based on 1.083 kb of 16S rRNA mtDNA, that suggested that the subgenera Lalos and Leptolalax are monophyletic sister taxa. Rowley, Tran, Le, Dau, Peloso, Nguyen, Hoang, Nguyen, and Ziegler, 2016, Zootaxa, 4085: 63–102, reported on phylogenetics, comparative morphology and calls of the Leptolalax applebyi group of species. Matsui, Eto, Nishikawa, Hamidy, Belabut, Ahmad, Panha, Khonsue, and Grismer, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 36: 11–21, also presented an mtDNA tree of Leptobrachella and Leptolalax, finding the Leptobrachella imbedded within Leptolalax. Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 591–611, reviewed the species of Leptolalax in China (as Paramegophrys) and provided accounts, photographs, and dot maps.Yuan, Sun, Chen, Rowley, Wu, Hou, Wang, and Che, 2017, Zootaxa, 4300: 551–570, provided a comparative table of morphological features for the species of Leptolalax north of the Isthmus of Kra. : 162–171, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the group, found Leptolalax to be nonmonophyletic with respect to Leptobrachella, and placed Leptolalax into the synonymy of Leptobrachella. Chen, Xu, Poyarkov, Wang, Yuan, Hou, Suwannapoom, Wang, and Che, 2020, Zool. Res., Kunming, 41: 1–20, provided a key to the species of Yunnan, China. Wang, Lyu, Qi, Zeng, Zhang, Lu, and Wang, 2020, ZooKeys, 995: 97–125, provided an identification table of comparable characteristics for species found north of the Isthmus of Kra. Liu, Shi, Li, Zhang, Xiang, Wei, and Wang, 2023, ZooKeys, 1149: 103–134, providing a large 16s mtDNA tree and a complete table comparing adult morphologies for all species of the genus. Li, Wei, Cheng, Liu, Wei, and Wang, 2024, Biodiversity Data J., 12(e113427): 27, provided a tree based on RAG1 sequences of the species in Leptobrachella.Ninh, Nguyen, Le, Nguyen, Quoc, Orlov, Bezman-Moseyko, Le, Nguyen, and Ziegler, 2024, Russ. J. Herpetol., 31: 191–224, provided a detailed comparison of the species found north of the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand. 

Contained taxa (105 sp.):

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