Brachycephaloidea

Brachycephaloids
Brachycephalus pitanga
Pristimantis elegans
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Superfamily: Hyloidea
Clade: Brachycephaloidea
Families

Brachycephaloidea (or Terrarana) is a large monophyletic unranked clade of direct-developing frogs including more than 1,100 species, comprising about 15% of named frog species. Brachycephaloids inhabit the New World tropics, subtropics, and Andean regions. The group has undergone extensive changes in its taxonomy thanks to multiple molecular phylogenetic analyses in recent years. Until 2008, these species were placed in a single, large family (Brachycephalidae).

The diverse Brachycephaloidea contains several notable taxa. It includes the smallest known vertebrates, in the genus Brachycephalus (family Brachycephalidae): B. pulex and B. dacnis. It also holds the most specious vertebrate genus, Pristimantis (family Strabomantidae).

The cladogram below illustrates the relationships between families in the Brachycephaloidea, following Fouquet et al. (2024):

Brachycephaloidea

References

  1. 1 2 Hedges, S. Blair; Duellman, William E.; Heinicke, Matthew P. (2008-03-31). "New World direct-developing frogs (Anura: Terrarana): Molecular phylogeny, classification, biogeography, and conservation". Zootaxa. 1737 (1): 1–182–1–182. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.1737.1.1. ISSN 1175-5334.
  2. 1 2 Fouquet, Antoine; Kok, Philippe J.R.; Recoder, Renato Sousa; Prates, Ivan; Camacho, Agustin; Marques-Souza, Sergio; Ghellere, José Mario; McDiarmid, Roy W.; Rodrigues, Miguel Trefaut (February 2024). "Relicts in the mist: Two new frog families, genera and species highlight the role of Pantepui as a biodiversity museum throughout the Cenozoic". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 191 107971. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2023.107971.
  3. ↑ Padial, José M.; Grant, Taran; Frost, Darrel R. (2014-06-26). "Molecular systematics of terraranas (Anura: Brachycephaloidea) with an assessment of the effects of alignment and optimality criteria". Zootaxa. 3825: 1–132. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3825.1.1. ISSN 1175-5334. PMID 24989881.
  4. ↑ Barrientos, Lucas S.; Streicher, Jeffrey W.; Miller, Elizabeth C.; Pie, Marcio R.; Wiens, John J.; Crawford, Andrew J. (2021-10-03). "Phylogeny of terraranan frogs based on 2,665 loci and impacts of missing data on phylogenomic analyses". Systematics and Biodiversity. 19 (7): 818–833. doi:10.1080/14772000.2021.1933249. ISSN 1477-2000.
  5. ↑ Bolaños, Wendy H.; Dias, Iuri Ribeiro; Solé, Mirco (2024-02-07). "Zooming in on amphibians: Which is the smallest vertebrate in the world?". Zoologica Scripta. 53 (4): 414–418. doi:10.1111/zsc.12654. eISSN 1463-6409. ISSN 0300-3256. S2CID 267599475.
  6. ↑ Toledo, Luís Felipe; Botelho, Lucas Machado; Carrasco-Medina, Andres Santiago; Gray, Jaimi A.; Ernetti, Julia R.; Gama, Joana Moura; Lyra, Mariana Lucio; Blackburn, David C.; Nunes, Ivan; Muscat, Edelcio (2024-10-25). "Among the world's smallest vertebrates: a new miniaturized flea-toad (Brachycephalidae) from the Atlantic rainforest". PeerJ. 12 e18265. doi:10.7717/peerj.18265. ISSN 2167-8359. PMC 11514764. PMID 39469590.
  7. ↑ Rojas-Runjaic, Fernando J. M.; C, J. Amanda Delgado; Guayasamin, Juan M. (2014-03-20). "A new rainfrog of the Pristimantis myersi Group (Amphibia, Craugastoridae) from Volcán Pichincha, Ecuador". Zootaxa. 3780 (1): 36–50. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3780.1.2. ISSN 1175-5334.