Ranixalidae Dubois, 1987

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Ranixalidae
18 species

Ranixalini Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 66. Type genus: Ranixalus Dubois, 1986, by original designation.

Ranixalinae — Dubois, 1992, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 61: 334.

Indiraninae Blommers-Schlösser, 1993, Ethol. Ecol. Evol., 5: 211. Type genus: Indirana Laurent, 1986. Synonymy with Ranixalinae by Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 175–176.

Ranixalidae — Van Bocxlaer, Roelants, Biju, Nagaraju, and Bossuyt, 2006, PLoS One, 1: 1–6.

Common Names

Leaping Frogs (Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 473).

Distribution

Central and southern India.

Comment

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, provided evidence for this taxon to be within Petropedetidae and provided a taxonomic history, although they did not address the contribution of Scott (2005). Vences, Wanke, Odierna, Kosuch, and Veith, 2000, Hamadryad, 25: 75–82, provided discussion of molecular evidence on the phylogenetic position of Indirana. Bossuyt, Brown, Hillis, Cannatella, and Milinkovitch, 2006, Syst. Biol., 55: 579–594, provided evidence inconsistent with the placement by Frost et al., 2006, of Indirana in Petropedetidae (although they did not address the shared highly-derived tadpole, but otherwise corroborated the monophyly of Petropedetidae sensu Frost et al. (2006). Van Bocxlaer, Roelants, Biju, Nagaraju, and Bossuyt, 2006, PLoS One, 1: 1–6, removed Indirana to a reranked Ranixalidae and placed it as the sister taxon of Micrixalidae. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 473, provided a general taxonomic account and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of amphibian biology. Wiens, Sukumaran, Pyron, and Brown, 2009, Evolution, 63: 1217–1231, suggested that Ranixalidae (as Ranixalinae of Ranidae) is the sister taxon of Ceratobatrachidae (their Ceratobatrachinae of Ranidae), although since they did not provide confidence measures on the relevant stems (unlike others in the same tree) one must assume this result was not well-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, suggested Ranixalidae as the sister taxon of Dicroglossidae based on two exemplars of Indirana. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148: 39–55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon. Vitt and Caldwell, 2014, Herpetology, 4th Ed., provided a summary of life history, diagnosis, and taxonomy. Dahanukar, Modak, Krutha, Nameer, Padhye, and Molur, 2016, J. Threatened Taxa, 8: 9221–9288, provided a revision and review of the entire group. 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 an element 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 (18 sp.):

Indirana Laurent, 1986 (14 sp.)
Walkerana Dahanukar, Modak, Krutha, Nameer, Padhye, and Molur, 2016 (4 sp.)

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