Phyllomedusidae

family of amphibians

Phyllomedusidae is a family of frogs that live in the Neotropics in North America, South America, and nearby islands. They are called leaf frogs in English. Some scientists say it is a subfamily of the family Hylidae, the tree frogs. Other scientists say it is a sister clade to Hylidae instead.

Phyllomedusidae
Burmeister's leaf frog
(Phyllomedusa burmeisteri)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Superfamily: Hyloidea
Family: Phyllomedusidae
Gunther, 1858
Diversity
8 genera, 66 species

The family could be a sister group to the Australian treefrogs (Pelodryadidae), a family of frogs that live in Australia and New Guinea. Scientists think this is possible even though the two groups of frogs live very far away from each other, on different continents. All these frogs could have come from the same ancestor frog that lived in early Cenozoic in South America, where the Phyllomedusidae still live. The two families of frogs would have split from one another during the Eocene period. The ancestors of Pelodryadidae probably colonized Australasia from South America by going through Antarctica, which at the time was not yet frozen over.[1] The clade with both families is sister to the Hylidae, from which they split apart in the early Paleogene.[2]

Taxonomy

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The family Phyllomedusidae contains the following genera:

References

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  1. Duellman, William E.; Marion, Angela B.; Hedges, S. Blair (2016-04-19). "Phylogenetics, classification, and biogeography of the treefrogs (Amphibia: Anura: Arboranae)". Zootaxa. 4104 (1): 1–109. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4104.1.1. ISSN 1175-5334. PMID 27394762.
  2. Feng, Yan-Jie; Blackburn, David C.; Liang, Dan; Hillis, David M.; Wake, David B.; Cannatella, David C.; Zhang, Peng (2017-07-18). "Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (29): E5864–E5870. doi:10.1073/pnas.1704632114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5530686. PMID 28673970.

Other websites

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  Data related to Phyllomedusinae at Wikispecies   Media related to Phyllomedusinae at Wikimedia Commons