African bullfrogs

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African bullfrogs
Pyxicephalus adspersus

Pyxicephalus adspersus

Systematics
Superclass : Jaw mouths (Gnathostomata)
Row : Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
without rank: Amphibians (Lissamphibia)
Order : Frog (anura)
Subordination : Neobatrachia
Family : African bullfrogs
Scientific name
Pyxicephalidae
Bonaparte , 1850

The African bullfrogs (Pyxicephalidae) are a family of the frogs . They live in Africa , south of the Sahara . The family was spun off from the family of real frogs (Ranidae) in 2006 .

features

The African bullfrogs are composed of morphologically very different genera. There are no external similarities that could be used as synapomorphism to differentiate from other families. A feature that the genera of this family lack is the lobed, median tongue process, which occurs in many ancient frogs, including the Petropedetidae and Phrynobatrachidae , which are closely related to the Pyxicephalidae . In contrast to the difficult external diagnosis , the molecular genetic findings clearly indicate a close relationship between the genera within the family Pyxicephalidae.

The genera Pyxicephalus and Aubria are very large and stocky . Together they form the subfamily Pyxicephalinae . In the second subfamily, the Cacosterninae , only the genera Amietia and Strongylopus resemble the real frogs in size and appearance. The other members of this subfamily are generally very small. In Microbatrachella , Nothophryne and Poyntonia , the omosternum (the front part of the sternum ) and the connection between the procoracoid and the clavicle are barely ossified.

Systematics and taxonomy

While in 2005 the African bullfrogs, with almost the same range of genera as today, were counted as a subfamily of the Ranidae family, in 2006, in an extensive study by Darrel Frost and others, almost all subfamilies of the Ranidae were raised to families of their own . The African bullfrogs were then divided into two subfamilies. The sister group of the Pyxicephalidae are the Petropedetidae, with which they were sometimes combined to form the superfamily Pyxicephaloidea .

Genera

The African bullfrogs comprise two subfamilies with a total of 13 genera.

The monotypical genus Ericabatrachus (with the only species Ericabatrachus baleensis ) is difficult to classify and is placed by Darrel R. Frost in the family of the African bullfrogs, in other classifications in the vicinity of the Petropedetidae. According to a recent analysis, its inclusion in the Petropedetidae is justified.

Individual evidence

  1. Taran Grant, Elaine C. Humphrey & Charles W. Myers: The Median Lingual Process of Frogs: A Bizarre Character of Old World Ranoids Discovered in South American Dendrobatids. American Museum Novitates, 3212, pp. 1-36, 1997
  2. a b Darrel R. Frost, Taran Grant, Julián Faivovich, Raoul H. Bain, Alexander Haas, Celio FB Haddad, Rafael O. de Sá, A. Channing, Mark Wilkinson, Stephen C. Donnellan, Christopher J. Raxworthy, Jonathan A. Campbell, Boris L. Blotto, Paul E. Moler, Robert C. Drewes, Ronald A. Nussbaum, John D. Lynch, David M. Green, and Ward C. Wheeler: The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297, pp. 1-370, 2006 full text
  3. ^ A. Dubois: Amphibia Mundi. 1.1. An ergotaxonomy of recent amphibians. Alytes, 23, pp. 1-24, 2005
  4. a b Darrel Frost: Pyxicephalidae , Amphibian Species of the World, American Museum of Natural History, 1998-2014. Retrieved February 24, 2014
  5. Michael F. Barej, Andreas Schmitz, Rainer Günther, Simon P. Loader, Kristin Mahlow, Mark-Oliver Rödel: The first endemic West African vertebrate family - a new anuran family highlighting the uniqueness of the Upper Guinean biodiversity hotspot. Frontiers in Zoology, 11: 8, 2014 online

literature

  • Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte: Conspectus Systematum. Herpetologiae et Amphibiologiae. Editio altera reformata. EJ Brill, Leiden 1850 (first description)

Web links

Commons : African bullfrogs (Pyxicephalidae)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files