Nyctibatrachidae

Nyctibatrachidae is a small family of frogs found in the Western Ghats of India and in Sri Lanka. Their common name is robust frogs.[1][2] Recognition of Nyctibatrachidae as a family is fairly recent. These frogs were earlier on placed in the broadly defined family Ranidae, most recently divided in three subfamilies, Lankanectinae, Nyctibatrachinae, and Astrobatrachinae.[3][4]

Nyctibatrachidae
Nyctibatrachus beddomii
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Clade: Ranoidea
Family: Nyctibatrachidae
Blommers-Schlösser, 1993
Type genus
Nyctibatrachus
Boulenger, 1882

Genera

The family contains three genera in their own subfamilies:[1][2][4]

  • Subfamily Astrobatrachinae
    • Astrobatrachus Vijayakumar et al., 2019 (Western Ghats of southwestern India – 1 species)
  • Subfamily Lankanectinae
    • Lankanectes Dubois and Ohler, 2001 (Sri Lanka – 2 species)
  • Subfamily Nyctibatrachinae
    • Nyctibatrachus Boulenger, 1882 (Western Ghats of southwestern India – 28 species)

Description

Nyctibatrachus are robust-bodied frogs that range in size from small (snout–vent length <20 mm in Nyctibatrachus beddomii) to relatively large (up to 84 mm Nyctibatrachus karnatakaensis). They occur in near streams in hilly evergreen forests. Lankanectes is an aquatic species of slow-moving rivers in marshy areas.[5]

References
  1. Frost, Darrel R. (2014). "Nyctibatrachidae Blommers-Schlösser, 1993". Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 6.0. American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
  2. "Nyctibatrachidae". AmphibiaWeb: Information on amphibian biology and conservation. [web application]. Berkeley, California: AmphibiaWeb. 2015. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  3. Blackburn, D.C.; Wake, D.B. (2011). "Class Amphibia Gray, 1825. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness" (PDF). Zootaxa. 3148: 39–55.
  4. Shanker, Kartik; Blackburn, David C.; Stanley, Edward L.; Swamy, Priyanka; Srikanthan, Achyuthan N.; Torsekar, Varun R.; Dinesh, K. P.; Pyron, Robert Alexander; Vijayakumar, Seenapuram Palaniswamy (2019-03-12). "A new ancient lineage of frog (Anura: Nyctibatrachidae: Astrobatrachinae subfam. nov.) endemic to the Western Ghats of Peninsular India". PeerJ. 7: e6457. doi:10.7717/peerj.6457. ISSN 2167-8359. PMC 6419720.
  5. Vitt, Laurie J.; Caldwell, Janalee P. (2014). Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles (4th ed.). Academic Press. pp. 509–510.
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