Barygenys Parker, 1936

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Microhylidae > Subfamily: Asterophryinae > Genus: Barygenys
9 species

Barygenys Parker, 1936, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 10, 17: 73. Type species: Barygenys cheesmanae Parker, 1936, by original designation.

English Names

Papua Frogs (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 87).

Distribution

High elevations of the western highlands of Papua New Guinea to the Louisiade Archipelago.

Comment

See Zweifel, 1981 "1980", Pacific Sci., 34: 269-275, for a key to species and cladogram. See comments under Asterophryinae and Genyophryninae. Köhler and Günther, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 47: 353-365, on the basis of molecular evidence suggested that Barygenys is phylogenetically imbedded within a nonmonophyletic "Cophixalus". Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583, in their molecular study, did not reject this due to reduced taxon sampling. Rivera, Kraus, Allison, and Butler, 2017, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 112: 7, questioned the monophyly of this genus. Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 418, found their three exemplars of Barygenys (Barygenys flavigularis, Barygenys cheesmanae, and Barygenys exsul) did not form a monophyletic group, Barygenys flavigularis being the sister of Cophixalus sphagnicolus, Barygenys cheesmanae being the sister of of a collection of various Cophixlaus, Paedophryne, and Barygenys, and Barygenys exsul being the sister of three species of Paedophryne. In order to resolve the hot mess that Asterophryinae presents regarding generic boundaries, these authors placed all asterophryine genera, with the exception of Gastrophrynoides, into Asterophrys. While this does resolve one problem, it just trades it for another. One hopes that the generic boundaries can be resolved in the near future. 

Contained taxa (9 sp.):

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