Liuixalus Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Rhacophoridae > Subfamily: Rhacophorinae > Genus: Liuixalus
6 species

Liuixalus Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 48: 311. Type species: Philautus romeri Smith, 1953, by original designation. See comment under Romerus in synonymy. 

Romerus Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 262. Type species: Philautus romeri Smith, 1953. Name to replace Liuixalus Li et al., 2008, which Dubois et al. and Dubois, 2021, Bionomina, 24: 41–42, argue was invalidly proposed; this rejected by Ren, Jiang, and Li, 2023, Asian Herpetol. Res., 14: 121–122. See comment. 

Common Names

None noted. 

Distribution

China in seemingly isolated populations in Hong Kong, Guangdong–Guangxi border area, and Hainan to northern Vietnam. 

Comment

Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 48: 302–312, suggested that this taxon is the sister of all rhacophorids, excluding Buergeria, as did Yu, Rao, Yang, and Zhang, 2008, Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 153: 733–749; Yu, Rao, Zhang, and Yang, 2009, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 50: 571–579; and Li, Che, Murphy, Zhao, Zhao, Rao, and Zhang, 2009, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 53: 509–522. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, confirmed the monophyly of Liuixalus and its placement as the sister taxon of remaining rhacophorines, but by using an antiquated taxonomy they obscured this result. Hertwig, Das, Schweizer, Brown, and Haas, 2012, Zool. Scripta, 41: 29–46, also confirmed the placement of Liuixalus as the sister taxon of remaining rhacophorines and provided a tree of the species. These authors also placed Philautus albopunctatus as a member of Liuixalus, but did not document the change. See comment under Theloderma asperum. Li, Li, Klaus, Rao, Hillis, and Zhang, 2013, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 110: 3441–3446, also confirmed the sister taxon placement of Liuixalus with respect to the remainder of the rhacophorines. Nguyen, Matsui, and Yoshikawa, 2014, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 33: 29–37, provided some molecular evidence regarding relationships within the genus. Dubois, 2021, Bionomina, 24: 41–42, discussed generic nomenclature and suggested that the name Liuixalus was invalid; the validity of this name was supported by Ren, Jiang, and Li, 2023, Asian Herpetol. Res., 14: 121–122. 

Contained taxa (6 sp.):

Liuixalus calcarius Milto, Poyarkov, Orlov, and Nguyen, 2013
Liuixalus feii Yang, Rao, and Wang, 2015
Liuixalus hainanus (Liu and Wu, 2004)
Liuixalus ocellatus (Liu and Hu, 1973)
Liuixalus romeri (Smith, 1953)
Liuixalus shiwandashan Li, Mo, Jiang, Xie, and Jiang, 2015

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