Hypselotriton Wolterstorff, 1934

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Salamandridae > Subfamily: Pleurodelinae > Genus: Hypselotriton
12 species

Hypselotriton Wolterstorff, 1934, Zool. Anz., 108: 257. Type species: Molge wolterstorffi Boulenger, 1905, by original designation. 

Cynotriton Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2011, Alytes, 27: 152. Type species: Triton (Cynops) orientalis David, 1875, by original designation. Coined as a subgenus of Hypselotriton

Hakkatriton Wang, Zeng, Wei, and Lyu, 2024, Zoosyst. Evol., 100: 1126. Type species: Cynops orphicus Risch, 1983, by original designation. Coined as a subgenus of Hypselotriton. Zoobank Publication Registration: 7720F592-80B8-417D-AB7F-EF28AE0B91B4

Common Names

None noted. 

Distribution

China (southern Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangxi, southern Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces). 

Comment

See comment under Cynops for a more detailed summary of the taxonomic peregrinations of this taxon in and out of Cynops. Removed from the synonymy of Cynops by Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2009, Alytes, 26: 31–32, 45 , where it had been placed by Zhao and Hu, 1984, Stud. Chinese Tailed Amph.: 21; Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 391–392. See comment under Cynops, with which this taxon has a literature history deeply entwined. Yuan, Wu, Yan, Murphy, Papenfuss, Wake, Zhang, and Che, 2022, Zool. Res., Kunming, 43: 706–718, provided molecular evidence for the paraphyly of Cynops sensu lato, with Hypselotriton (=mainland "Cynops" being more closely related to Laotriton, Paramesotriton, and Pachytriton than to Cynops sensu stricto. Wang, Zeng, Wei, and Lyu, 2024, Zoosyst. Evol., 100: 1121–1134, discussed the molecular phylogenetics of the species of Hypselotriton, provided a key to subgenus employing morphology and confirmed the paraphyly of Cynops sensu lato (in the sense of including Hypselotriton) with respect to a group composed of Laotriton, Paramesotriton, and Pachytriton. They also recognized three monophyletic subgenera within Hypselotriton: Cynotriton (Hypselotriton oolong, Hypselotriton maguae, Hypselotriton fudingensis, and Hypselotriton orientalis), Hypselotriton (Hypselotriton cyanurus, Hypselotriton wolterstorffi, Hypselotriton chenggongensis, and Hypselotriton yunnanensis), and Hakkatriton (Hypselotriton glaucus, Hypselotriton jiaoren and Hypselotriton orphicus). The authors did not address Hypselotriton chuxiongensis (although implying subspecies status under Hypselotrion cyanurus). Shen, Nishikawa, Jiang, Matsui, Rao, Yoshikawa, Tominaga, and Sanamxay, 2024, Zool. Res. Divers. Conserv., 1: 191–200, in their discussion of the phylogenetics, morpholological and molecular evolution, and biogeography of the Asian salamandrids (Cynops, Hypselotriton [though considered part of Cynops], Paramesotriton, Pachytriton, and Laotriton, suggested that at the very least the status of Cynops (sensu stricto and sensu lato) as monophyletic is deeply questionable and not supportable without additional evidence brought to bear, further evidence in support of Hypselotriton as more closely related to other Asian pleurdelines than to Cynops

Contained taxa (12 sp.):

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