Litoria Tschudi, 1838

Common Names

Australasian Treefrogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 58).

Distribution

New Guinea, Moluccan Islands, Lesser Sunda Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, and Australia, including Tasmania; introduced into New Caledonia, Guam, New Zealand.

Comment

At one time or the other about half of the species of pelodryadids have been assigned to Litoria, making for a very difficult literature to follow. Following is the (mildly modified) comment from under Litoria prior to its partition by Donnellan, Mahony, Esquerré, Brennan, Price, Lemmon, Lemmon, Günther, Monis, Bertozzi, Keogh, Shea, and Richards, 2025, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 204(2: zlaf015): 1–80 (who placed a much reduced Litoria in the Litoria-Rawlinsonia clade, composed of the former Litoria coplandi, Litoria freycineti, Litoria latopalmata, and Litoria nigrofrenata groups of Tyler and Davies, 1978, Aust. J. Zool., Suppl. Ser., 27 (63): 1–47), and should be use with caution: 

Papuan species were reviewed (as Hyla) by Tyler, 1968, Zool. Verh., Leiden, 96: 1–203; Australian state checklists provided by Tyler, 1989, Aust. Frogs. Tyler, 1982, in Newman (ed.), New Zealand Wildlife Serv. Occas Publ., 2: 103–112, provided a general summary of Litoria (sensu lato) systematics.  Data presented by Sumida, Allison, and Nishioka, 1998, Japan. J. Herpetol., 17: 164–174, suggested a number of cryptic species of nominal Litoria in New Guinea. Maxson, Ondrula, and Tyler, 1985, Aust. J. Zool., 33: 17–22, suggested on the basis of immunological evidence that Litoria (in the sense of including Dropsophus) is paraphyletic with respect to Cyclorana. Kuramoto and Allison, 1991, Japan. J. Herpetol., 14: 6–11, suggested on the basis of karyological evidence that Litoria (in the sense of including Dryopsophus) is paraphyletic with respect to Nyctimystes. King, 1981, in Banks and Martin (eds.), Proc. Melbourne Herpetol. Symp.: 169–175, discussed the species groups of Litoria (sensu lato) as illuminated by karyological data.  Maxson, Ondrula, and Tyler, 1985, Aust. J. Zool., 33: 17–22, and Hutchinson and Maxson, 1987, Aust. J. Zool., 35: 61–74, suggested on the basis of immunological evidence that Cyclorana is the sister taxon of the Litoria aurea species group, thereby rendering Litoria paraphyletic. Meyer, Jamieson, and Scheltinga, 1997, J. Submicroscop. Cytol. Pathol., 29: 443–451, provided a number of ultrastructural synapomorphies for the group and subgroups within it and supported the view that Litoria is paraphyletic with respect to Cyclorana. Kuramoto and Allison, 1991, Japan. J. Herpetol., 14: 6–11, suggested on the basis of karyological evidence that Litoria  (sensu lato) is paraphyletic with respect to Nyctimystes.Species groups noted in the species accounts of both Litoria and Dryopsophus, both of which were in Litoria at the time were defined by Tyler and Davies, 1978, Aust. J. Zool., Suppl. Ser., 27 (63): 1–47. Papuan species were reviewed (as Hyla) by Tyler, 1968, Zool. Verh., Leiden, 96: 1–203; Australian state checklists provided by Tyler, 1989, Aust. Frogs. Tyler, 1982, in Newman (ed.), New Zealand Wildlife Serv. Occas Publ., 2: 103–112, provided a general summary of Litoria (sensu lato) systematics. King, Tyler, Davies, and King, 1979, Aust. J. Zool., 27: 699–708, reported on karyology. Cyclorana was omitted from the Myobatrachidae by Heyer and Liem, 1976, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 233: 11, thereby implying transfer to the Hylidae; transferred formally by Tyler, 1978, Amph. S. Aust.: XXX. See Czechura, Ingram, and Liem, 1987, Rec. Aust. Mus., 39: 338, for systematics of Australian populations of former Nyctimystes. 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: 205, considered Cyclorana as a monophyletic subgenus of Litoria, and placed Nyctimystes into the synonymy of Litoria because of the former's polyphyly and the latter's paraphyly (see below). Reynolds, 2012, Herpetofauna, Sydney, 40: 96–101, provided an identification table for ground hylids of northern Australia. Young, Christian, Donnellan, Tracy, and Parry, 2005, Physiol. Biochem. Zool., 78: 847–856, provided molecular evidence for the polyphyly of "Cyclorana" but did not include any members of Nyctimystes, thereby demonstrating, yet again, the non-monophyly of the group as then constructed. Richards and Donnellan, 2020, in Louys et al. (eds.), Rec. Aust. Mus., 5, 72: 325–337, suggested that the Litoria iris group is unlikely to be monophyletic.

Contained taxa (13 sp.):

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