Sooglossidae Noble, 1931

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Sooglossidae
4 species

Sooglossinae Noble, 1931, Biol. Amph.: 494. Type genus: Sooglossus Boulenger, 1906.

Sooglossidae — Griffiths, 1963, Biol. Rev. Cambridge Philos. Soc., 38: 273; Laurent, 1980 "1979", Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 104: 418.

Sooglossoidea — Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 18 (based on results of Hoegg, Vences, Brinkmann, and Meyer, 2004, Mol. Biol. Evol., 21; Blotto, Biju, Pereyra, Araujo-Vieira, Faivovich, and Grant, 2022, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 135: 336. Superfamily.

Common Names

Seychelles Frogs (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 135; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 114).

Seychelles Island Frogs (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 135).

Distribution

Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

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: 191 (who considered Nasikabatrachidae a synonym), and Roelants, Gower, Wilkinson, Loader, Biju, Guillaume, Moriau, and Bossuyt, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104: 887–892 (who recognized Nasikabatrachidae as distinct), suggested that Sooglossidae + Nasikabatrachidae is the sister taxon of all remaining hyloids.  Zhang, Liang, Hillis, Wake, and Cannatella, 2013, Mol. Biol. Evol., 30: 1899–1915, on the basis of analysis of complete mtDNA genomes, supported the traditional view of Sooglossidae as the sister taxon of ranoids, although noting that decisive results remain elusive. Previously, Lynch, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans: 133–182, suggested that Sooglossidae (sensu stricto) was the sister-taxon of Myobatrachinae (Myobatrachidae of this catalog); Savage, 1973, in Vial (ed.), Evol. Biol. Anurans, considered Sooglossidae to have affinities with ranoids, but because Lynch considered his Myobatrachinae and Sooglossidae to be cladistically closer to ranoids than to other bufonoids these statements are not in conflict. See Nussbaum, 1980, Herpetologica, 36: 1–5, Bogart and Tandy, 1981, Monit. Zool. Ital., N.S., Suppl., 15: 55–91; and Tyler, 1985, Herpetologica, 41: 173–176, for discussion of phylogenetic placement and review of systematic literature. See comment under Pelobatidae. Nussbaum and Wu, 2007, Zool. Stud., Taipei, 46: 322–335, discussed the phylogenetics of Sooglossidae (sensu stricto). van der Meijden, Boistel, Gerlach, Ohler, Vences, and Meyer, 2007, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 91: 347–359, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the group. Gerlach, 2007, Herpetol. J., 17: 115–122, discussed ranges. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 445–446, provided a general taxonomic account (in the sense of including Nasikabatrachidae) and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of amphibian biology. Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, suggested that Sooglossidae + Nasikabatrachidae is the sister taxon of all neobatrachians, excluding Heleophrynidae and otherwise confirmed relationships within these clades. 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. Kurabayashi and Sumida, 2013, BMC Genomics, 14 (633): 1–17, suggested on the basis of complete mt genomes and 9 nuclear genes that this family is the sister taxon of Ranoides. Gerlach, 2011, J. Threatened Taxa, 3: 2153–2166, reported on the susceptibility to climate change and discussed habitat and provided range maps for the species. Blotto, Biju, Pereyra, Araujo-Vieira, Faivovich, and Grant, 2022, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 135: 336–393, reported on hand and foot musculature, including synapomorphies of Nasikabatrachidae + Sooglossidae, convergences within that orverarching taxon, and discussed hind limb digging in anurans. 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 (4 sp.):

Sechellophryne Nussbaum and Wu, 2007 (2 sp.)
Sooglossus Boulenger, 1906 (2 sp.)

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