''Hyloscirtus'' is a genus of

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

s in the family

Hylidae Hylidae is a wide-ranging family of frogs commonly referred to as "tree frogs and their allies". However, the hylids include a diversity of frog species, many of which do not live in trees, but are terrestrial or semiaquatic. Taxonomy and s ...

. This genus was resurrected in 2005 following a major revision of the Hylidae, with the distinguishing features being 56 transformations in nuclear and

mitochondria A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the Cell (biology), cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and Fungus, fungi. Mitochondria have a double lipid bilayer, membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosi ...

l proteins and ribosomal

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

s. Of these species, 28 species, previously placed in the genus ''

Hyla ''Hyla'' is a genus of frogs in the tree frog family Hylidae. As traditionally defined, it was a wastebasket genus with more than 300 species found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and across the Americas. After a major revision of the family most of th ...

'', were moved to this genus. The fingers and toes of these frogs have wide dermal fringes. They are primarily found in foothill and mountain forests in the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

, ranging from

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

, but a few species occur in adjacent lowlands or ''

páramo Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...

'', and two ('' H. colymba'' and '' H. palmeri'') are found in

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...

and

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

. They are typically found near streams where they breed. Several species in this genus are seriously threatened by habitat loss, pollution,

introduced species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there ...

(predation by introduced

trout Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salmoni ...

), and the

chytrid fungus Chytridiomycota are a division of zoosporic organisms in the kingdom Fungi, informally known as chytrids. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek ('), meaning "little pot", describing the structure containing unreleased zoöspores. Chytrids ...

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ''Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis'' ( ), also known as ''Bd'' or the amphibian chytrid fungus, is a fungus that causes the disease chytridiomycosis in amphibians. Since its discovery in 1998 by Lee Berger, the disease devastated amphibian popul ...

''.

Species

There are currently 37 recognized species in this genus: AmphibiaWeb also lists ''Hyloscirtus estevesi'', which the Amphibian Species of World, following Barrio-Amorós and colleagues (2019), treats as

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of '' Hyloscirtus jahni''. ''

Hyloscirtus sethmacfarlanei ''Hyloscirtus sethmacfarlanei'', commonly known as Seth MacFarlane's torrent frog, is a species of frog in the family Hylidae. It is endemic to forest habitats in Ecuador. It has been observed in the Machay Reserve on Cerro Mayordomo, at 2970 met ...

'' (Juan and Darwin, 2022)

References

Cophomantinae Páramo fauna Amphibian genera Taxa named by Wilhelm Peters {{Hylidae-stub