Choerophryne Van Kampen, 1914

Common Names

Torricelli Mountain Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 88).

Distribution

New Guinea.

Comment

See Menzies and Tyler, 1977, J. Zool., London, 183: 443, for validation of this genus as distinct from Cophixalus (in which synonymy it had been placed by Parker, 1934, Monogr. Frogs Fam. Microhylidae: 177). Kraus and Allison, 2001, Herpetologica, 57: 214–232, reviewed the systematics of the genus and provided a key to the species as well as noting that populations in the Cyclops Mts. And Yapen Island of Papua, Indonesia, are not assigned to species. Menzies, 2006, Frogs New Guinea & Solomon Is.: 181–182, provided a key and brief accounts for the species. Albericus was considered to be most closely related to Choerophryne, according to Burton and Zweifel, 1995, Am. Mus. Novit., 3129: 1. See Menzies, 1999, Aust. J. Zool., 47: 327–360, for review of the genus with description of a number of species of Albericus, as well as discussion of specimens not allocated to any named species. Sumida, Allison, and Nishioka, 2000, Biochem. Syst. Ecol., 28: 733, disputed the distinctiveness of this taxon on the basis of allozyme distance from Cophixalus. Köhler and Günther, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 47: 353–365, suggested on the basis of molecular evidence that Albericus is monophyletic and the sister taxon of Choerophryne. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, corroborated this result. Kraus, 2013, Zoosyst. Evol., Berlin: 283–291, suggested on the basis of intermediacy of the angle of the alary process of Choerophryne bryonopsis (the only morphological characteristics separating Choerophryne and Albericus) that Choerophryne renders Albericus paraphyletic. Because molecular evidence was not presented Kraus (2013) deferred on making the synonymy of the junior Albericus with the senior Choerophryne.  Peloso, Frost, Richards, Rodrigues, Donnellan, Matsui, Raxworthy, Biju, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Wheeler, 2016, Cladistics, 32: 113–140, provided additional evidence and made the formal synonymy. Oliver, Iannella, Richards, and Lee, 2017, PeerJ, 5(e377): 1–23, reported on molecular phylogenetics, biogeography, trends in miniaturization, noted 11 unnamed species, and also provided evidence that Choerophryne exclamitans and an unnamed close relative are phylogenetically distant from the Choerophryne clade. Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 418, found their exemplars of Choerophryne to form a monophyletic group (not including Choerophryne exclamitans) but as a reaction to the generally chaotic state of generic limits within the Asterophryinae placed all of the genera examined by them, including Choerophryne into the synonymy of Asterophrys. 

Contained taxa (39 sp.):

External links:

Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.

• For access to general information see Wikipedia
• For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
• For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
• For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
• To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
• For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist