Synapturanus Carvalho, 1954

Common Names

Disc Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 93).

Distribution

Colombia and Peru east through the Guianas to northern Brazil.

Comment

Closely related to Elachistocleis and Myersiella according to Carvalho, 1954, Occas. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, 555: 18. See Nelson and Lescure, 1975, Herpetologica, 31: 389–397, for a discussion of the taxonomic history and literature of this genus. Formerly in the New World component of Microhylinae; 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: 225, considered Synapturanus to be a basal lineage of the entire Microhylidae and phylogenetically removed from Microhylinae or Gastrophryninae and excluded it from any subfamily pending resolution of its phylogenetic placement. Van Bocxlaer, Roelants, Biju, Nagaraju, and Bossuyt, 2006, PLoS One, 1: 1–6, suggested that Synapturanus is the sister taxon of Scaphiophryninae, but did not name the taxon. van der Meijden, Vences, Hoegg, Boistel, Channing, and Meyer, 2007, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 44: 1017–1030, found Synapturanus to be distantly related to other New World microhylids and excluded it from Gastrophryninae. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, placed Synapturanus as the sister taxon of Otophryne and in Otophryninae. Motta, Menin, Almeida, and Hrbek, 2018, Zootaxa, 4438: 79–104, suggested on the basis of sequence divergence among samples that several species remain to be named. Fouquet, Leblanc, Framit, Réjaud, Rodrigues, Castroviejo-Fisher, Peloso, Prates, Manzi, Suescun, Baroni, Moraes, Recoder, Marques-Souza, Vechio, Camacho, Ghellere, Rojas-Runjaic, Gagliardi-Urrutia, Carvalho, Gordo, Menin, Kok, Hrbek, Werneck, Crawford, Ron, Mueses-Cisneros, Rojas-Zamora, Pavan, Simões, Ernst, and Fabre, 2021, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 132: 233–256, suggested that the ranges of the nominal species required genetic confirmation, and employing genetic, morphometric, and call data suggested that their data supported at least 15 unnamed species-lineages, of which one might apply to the type species which could not be genetically assayed. Fouquet, Leblanc, Fabre, Rodrigues, Menin, Courtois, Dewynter, Hölting, Ernst, Peloso, and Kok, 2021, Zool. Anz., 293: 46–73, reported on comparative osteology and systmatics. Chávez, Thompson, Sánchez, Chávez-Arribasplata, and Catenazzi, 2022, Evol. Syst., 6: 9–20, provided a tree of the species based on 16S mtDNA. Osorno-Muñoz, Gutiérrez-Lamus, Lynch, Keefe, Caicedo-Portilla, Chan, Tonini, and de Sá, 2023, Zootaxa, 5258: 151–196, reported on the phylogenetics, morphometrics, and osteology of the Synapturanus rabus complex, naming three species (Synapturanus latebrosus, Synapturanus sacratus, and Synapturanus artifex), and noting possibly five other lineages.  

Contained taxa (10 sp.):

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