Tylototriton Anderson, 1871

Common Names

Crocodile Newts (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 36).

Crocodile Salamanders (Li, Zhao, and Dong, 2010, Amph. Rept. Tibet: 11).

Knobby Newts (Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 266). 

Yao Knobby Newts (Yaotriton: Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 288). 

Qian Newt (Qiantriton: Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2012, Colored Atlas Chinese Amph. Distr.: 594). 

Liangshan Warty Newts (Liangshantriton: Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 316). 

Distribution

Sikkim, Darjeeling area in north-central India, and Nepal east and southeast to central China, non-peninsular Myanmar, non-peninsular Thailand, through Laos to the central and northern highlands of Vietnam, southern China, and Hainan Island. 

Comment

See comments under Echinotriton and Liangshantriton. Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, in Fei et al. (eds.), Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 41–42, provided a key to the species of China. Weisrock, Papenfuss, Macey, Litvinchuk, Polymeni, Uğurtaş, Zhao, Jowkar, and Larson, 2006, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 41: 855–857, on the basis of DNA sequence data found a monophyletic Tylototriton (in the sense of including Yaotriton and Liangshantriton) to be in a monophyletic group with Echinotriton and Pleurodeles. Zhao, Rao, Liu, Li, and Yuan, 2012, J. W. China Forest. Sci., 41: 85–89, provided an ND2 tree of the species. Stuart, Phimmachak, Sivongxay, and Robichaud, 2010, Zootaxa, 2650: 19–32, as did Yuan, Jiang, Lü, Yang, Nguyen, Nguyen, Jin, and Che, 2011, Zool. Res., Kunming, 32: 577–584, provided a molecular analysis of Tylototriton asperrimus group (= Yaotriton). Shen, Jiang, and Mo, 2012, Asian Herpetol. Res., Ser. 2, 3: 2130, provided a molecular tree of the Tylototriton asperrimus group (= Yaotriton). Gu, Chen, Wang, Tian, Chen, and Tian, 2012, Acta Zootaxon. Sinica, 37: 20–28, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the Tylototriton asperrimus group as the subgenus Yaotriton. Nishikawa, Matsui, and Nguyen, 2013, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 32: 34–49, reported on an ND2 gene tree. Nishikawa, Khonsue, Pomchote, and Matsui, 2013, Zootaxa, 3737: 261–279, reviewed the systematics of Tylototriton, noted the equivocal nature  of the evidence for its monophyly, questioned the morphological evidence for the recognition of Yaotriton (which they treated as a synonym or subgenus of Tylototriton), named two new species and noted other populations that likely represent independent lineages. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 180–189, provided brief accounts, photographs, and range maps for the species. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 177–178, provided brief accounts, photographs, and range map. Sparreboom, 2014, Salamanders Old World: 357–385, reviewed the biology, characteristics, distribution, reproduction, and conservation of the species. Phimmachak, Aowphol, and Stuart, 2015, Zootaxa, 4006: 293, provided a mtDNA tree of the species of Tylototriton. Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 266–308, provided accounts (as Tylototriton and Yaotriton) for Chinese species; the recognition of Yaotriton as a genus was without comment regarding to studies that did not support recognition of this taxon. Hernandez, 2016, Crocodile Newts, summarized the biology of the species.  Wang, Yuan, Zhong, Li, and Verrell, 2017, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 11(2): 33–43, discussed the reproductive biology of the members of the Tylototriton verrucosus group. Wang, Nishikawa, Matsui, Nguyen, Xie, Li, Khatiwada, Zhang, Gong, Mo, Wei, Chen, Shen, Yang, Xiong, and Jiang, 2018, PeerJ, 6(e4384): 1–29, reported on molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of the species of Tylototriton. Han, Wu, Qian, Sun, Zhang, and Pan, 2018, MtDNA, Part B, 3: 1300–1301, provided a ML tree of the species. Zaw, Lay, Pawangkhanant, Gorin, and Poyarkov, 2019, Zool. Res., Kunming, 40: 1–24, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the species. Bernardes, Le, Nguyen, Pham, Pham, Nguyen, Rödder, Bonkowski, and Ziegler, 2020, ZooKeys, 935: 121–164, reported on the molecular phylogenetics of the Tylototriton asperrimus complex and provided range maps for all species, except for Tylototriton phukhaensis, unnamed at the time. Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 408, recognized Yaotriton as a genus without discussion although their exemplars did form a monophyletic group as the sister taxon of their Tylototriton; DRF refrains from change pending some sense of acceptance from the community of salamander taxonomists. Poyarkov, Nguyen, and Arkhipov, 2021, Taprobanica, 10: 4–22, discussed molecular phylogenetics, treated Yaotriton as a subgenus, and delimited species groups. Lyu, Wang, Zeng, Zhou, Qi, Wan, Li, and Wang, 2021, Vert. Zool., Senckenberg, 71: 697–710, rejected the use of subgenera and cast the species into three species groups, noted in the species records. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 279–325, provided species accounts, summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including polygon maps). Bernardes and van Schingen-Khan, 2024, Tech. Rep.: 1–66, provided an identification key to the species.    

Contained taxa (40 sp.):

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