Gracixalus Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2005

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Rhacophoridae > Subfamily: Rhacophorinae > Genus: Gracixalus
16 species

Gracixalus Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2005, Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon, 74: 166. Type species: Philautus gracilipes Bourret, 1937, by original designation. Coined as a subgenus of Aquixalus Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2005.

Gracixalus — Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 48: 3010. Treatment as a genus.

Common Names

None noted.

Distribution

Northern and central montane Vietnam as well as intervening Laos; adjacent extreme southern Yunnan, eastern Xizang, Guangxi, and Jiangxi Provinces, China; northwestern Thailand and presumably in adjacent Myanmar and Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Comment

As original concieved, Aquixalus was intentionally para/polyphyletic, with Aquixalus verrucosus and Aquixalus idiootocus being phylogenetically in a monophyletic group with Kurixalus eiffingeri and not in the group containing the remainder of Aquixalus. 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: 246, redelimited Aquixalus, transferring Aquixalus verrucosus and Aquixalus idiootocus into a monophyletic Kurixalus. On the basis of evidence suggested in the original publication, the nominal subgenus Gracixalus is monophyletic, while the coordinate subgenus, subgenus Aquixalus, has no obvious morphological evidence in support of its monophyly (DRF). Grosjean, Delorme, Dubois, and Ohler, 2008, J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 46: 169–176, confirmed the transfer of Aquixalus verrucosus and Aquixalus idiootus into Kurixalus and provided molecular evidence for an association of Gracixalus with Aquixalus, although subsequently Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 48: 302–312, on the basis of a larger molecular dataset, provided molecular evidence that Aquixalus (sensu stricto) should be placed within Kurixalus and that Gracixalus is phylogenetically distant from Kurixalus. See comment under Chirixalus samkosensis. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, placed Gracixalus as the sister taxon of Philautus (sensu stricto) and confirmed its monophyly, although by employing an antiquated taxonomy that obscured this result. Rowley, Nguyen, Dau, Nguyen, and Cao, 2011, Zootaxa, 3125: 22–38, suggested on the basis of molecular evidence that two major clades can be delimited, one containing Gracixalus jinxiuensis and a number of unnamed species previously confused with other species, and another clade composed of at least Gracixalus quyeti, Gracixalus gracilipes, Gracixalus supercornutus, and Gracixalus quangi. Li, Li, Klaus, Rao, Hillis, and Zhang, 2013, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 110: 3441–3446, confirmed the sister-taxon relationship of Gracixalus and Philautus, providing additional evidence for the independence of direct-development in Philautus and that in Pseudophilautus and (possibly again not homologous in the) Raorchestes clade. Rowley, Le, Dau, Hoang, and Cao, 2014, Zootaxa, 3785: 25–37, provided preliminary molecular evidence for relationships within the genus. Chen, Bei, Liao, Zhou, and Mo, 2018, Asian Herpetol. Res., 9: 74–84, provided a molecular ML tree of the species of Gracixalus and provided a map of the type localities of the species of Gracixalus. Nguyen, Duong, Luu, and Poyarkov, 2020, J. Nat. Hist., London, 54: 1–29, provided a table of morphological characteristics for the species. Chen, Prendini, Wu, Zhang, Suwannapoom, Chen, Jin, Lemmon, Lemmon, Stuart, Raxworthy, Murphy, Yuan, and Che, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 145 (106724): 1–13, discussed previously published alternatives and suggested that the position of Gracixalus is uncertain. Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 256, partitioned Gracixalus into Orixalus and Gracixalus as sister genera and provided molecular and morphological markers. 

Contained taxa (16 sp.):

Gracixalus gracilipes (Bourret, 1937)
Gracixalus guangdongensis Wang, Zeng, Liu, and Wang, 2018
Gracixalus jinggangensis Zeng, Zhao, Chen, Chen, Zhang, and Wang, 2017
Gracixalus lumarius Rowley, Le, Dau, Hoang, and Cao, 2014
Gracixalus medogensis (Ye and Hu, 1984)
Gracixalus patkaiensis Boruah, Deepak, Patel, Jithin, Yomcha, and Das, 2023
Gracixalus quangi Rowley, Dau, Nguyen, Cao, and Nguyen, 2011
Gracixalus quyeti (Nguyen, Hendrix, Böhme, Vu, and Ziegler, 2008)
Gracixalus sapaensis Matsui, Ohler, Eto, and Nguyen, 2017
Gracixalus seesom Matsui, Khonsue, Panha, and Eto, 2015
Gracixalus supercornutus (Orlov, Ho, and Nguyen, 2004)
Gracixalus tianlinensis Chen, Bei, Liao, Zhou, and Mo, 2018
Gracixalus trieng Rowley, Le, Hoang, Cao, and Dau, 2020
Gracixalus truongi Tran, Pham, Le, Nguyen, Ziegler, and Pham, 2023
Gracixalus yunnanensis Yu, Li, Wang, Rao, Wu, and Yang, 2019
Gracixalus ziegleri Le, Do, Tran, Nguyen, Orlov, Ninh, and Nguyen, 2021

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