Hemidactyliinae Hallowell, 1856

Common Names

None noted.

Distribution

Fairly continuous from extreme southern Maine (USA), extreme southern Quebec (Canada), extreme southern Ontario (Canada), and northern Wisconsin (USA), southward to the Fall Line in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee (USA); presumably disjunct populations occur in Nova Scotia (Canada), Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia, and northern Florida (USA); Western and southern North America south to Brazil.

Comment

See comment under Plethodontidae for discussion of taxonomic history. Superseded, but still useful literature on the phylogeny of the bolitoglossine group is that by Elias and Wake, 1983, in Rhodin and Miyata (eds.), Adv. Herpetol. Evol. Biol.: 1–12, and Wake and Elias, 1983, Contrib. Sci. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 345: 1–19. Sever, Heinz, Lempart, and Taghon, 1990, Herpetologica, 46: 431–446, discussed cloacal morphology with reference to bolitoglossine phylogenetics. Chippindale, Bonett, Baldwin, and Wiens, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2809-2822, considered Bolitoglossinae to be the sister taxon of Spelerpinae, while Macey, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 194–202, regarded Bolitoglossinae as the sister taxon of all plethodontids, excluding Hemidactyliinae. Wiens, Parra-Olea, García-París, and Wake, 2007, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. B, Biol. Sci., 274: 918–928, reported on the phylogenetics of bolitoglossines, assuming Batrachoseps as the root and excluding South American Bolitoglossa. Vieites, Min, and Wake, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104: 19903–19907, on the basis of nuDNA suggested that the bolitoglossines are the sister taxon of Spelerpinae and, together with Hemidactyliinae of Macey (2005) they included within an enlarged Hemidactyliinae. Chen, Wang, Liu, Xie, and Jiang, 2011, Curr. Zool., Chengdu, 57: 785–805, on the basis of 11 protein-coding mtDNA genes, suggested that Hemidactyliinae sensu Vieites et al., 2007, 2011, is paraphyletic with respect to Plethodontinae. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 36–92, provided a key to and very brief characterizations the species of Central America. Rovito and Parra-Olea, 2016, Copeia, 2016: 222–232, summarized current understanding of bolitoglossine biogeography in the Neotropics. Cázares-Hernández, Molohua Tzitzihua, Méndez Quiahua, Quiahua Colotl, Temoxtle Marquez, Rodriguez Merino, and Apale Pacheco, 2018, Tlaconetes: 1–92, reported on the bolitoglossines of the Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz, Mexico. Segovia-Ramírez, Ramírez-Sánchez, Decena Segarra, Rios-Carlos, and Rovito, 2023, Ecol. Evol., 13(e10707): 1–18, reported on a comparative study of bolitoglossines (Aquiloeurycea, Bolitoglossa, Bradytriton, Chiropterotriton, Cryptotriton, Dendrotriton, Isthmura, Nyctanolis, Oedipina, Parvimolge, Pseudoeurycea, and Thorius) which suggests that coding loci may be more appropriate for genetic diversity estimates used in conservation planning. 

 

Contained taxa (399 sp.):

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