Rhacophoridae
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The Rhacophoridae are a
family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
of
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 that occur in tropical
sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...
,
South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territo ...
and
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, northeastern India to eastern
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
and
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
, south through the
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
and
Greater Sundas The Greater Sunda Islands ( Indonesian and Malay: ''Kepulauan Sunda Besar'') are four tropical islands situated within Indonesian Archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean. The islands, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi and Sumatra, are internationally recognise ...
, and
Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...
. They are commonly known as shrub frogs, or more ambiguously as " moss frogs" or " bush frogs". Some Rhacophoridae are called "
tree frog A tree frog (or treefrog) is any species of frog that spends a major portion of its lifespan in trees, known as an arboreal state. Several lineages of frogs among the Neobatrachia have given rise to treefrogs, although they are not closely rela ...
s". Among the most spectacular members of this family are numerous "
flying frog A flying frog (also called a gliding frog) is a frog that has the ability to achieve gliding flight. This means it can descend at an angle less than 45° relative to the horizontal. Other nonflying arboreal frogs can also descend, but only at angle ...
s". Although a few groups are primarily
terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
, rhacophorids are predominantly
arboreal Arboreal locomotion is the Animal locomotion, locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some animals may scale trees only occasionally, but others are exclusively arboreal. Th ...
treefrogs. Mating frogs, while in
amplexus Amplexus (Latin "embrace") is a type of mating behavior exhibited by some externally fertilizing species (chiefly amphibians and horseshoe crabs) in which a male grasps a female with his front legs as part of the mating process, and at the same ...
, hold on to a branch, and beat their legs to form a foam. The eggs are laid in the foam and covered with seminal fluid before the foam hardens into a protective casing. In some species, this is done in a large group. The foam is laid above a water source so the tadpoles fall into the water once they hatch. The species within this family vary in size from . Like other arboreal frogs, they have toe discs, and those of the genus '' Chiromantis'' have two opposable fingers on each hand. This family also contains the Old World
flying frog A flying frog (also called a gliding frog) is a frog that has the ability to achieve gliding flight. This means it can descend at an angle less than 45° relative to the horizontal. Other nonflying arboreal frogs can also descend, but only at angle ...
s, including Wallace's flying frog (''
Rhacophorus nigropalmatus Wallace's flying frog (''Rhacophorus nigropalmatus''), also known as the gliding frog or the Abah River flying frog, is a moss frog found at least from the Malay Peninsula into western Indonesia, and is present in Borneo and Sumatra. It is nam ...
''). These frogs have extensive webbing between their fore and hind limbs, allowing them to glide through the air.


Taxonomy


Evolution

The Rhacophoridae are the sister group to the
Mantellidae The Mantellidae are a family of the order Anura. These frogs are endemic to the islands of Madagascar and Mayotte. Systematics The family Mantellidae is composed of three extremely ecologically diverse groups of frogs, divided into three sub ...
, a family of frogs restricted to
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. Both families are thought to have diverged during the
Paleocene The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), E ...
, although previous studies estimated a
Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
divergence. Two different hypotheses for this divergence have been proposed: one that the Mantellidae and Rhacophoridae diverged when
Insular India The term Insular India refers to the isolated landmass which became the Indian subcontinent. Across the latter stages of the Cretaceous and most of the Paleocene, following the breakup of Gondwana, the Indian subcontinent remained an isolated land ...
broke from Madagascar, with the Rhacophoridae colonizing the rest of Asia following the collision of India with Asia, and the other proposing that the common ancestors of both families inhabited Asia, with the ancestral Mantellidae colonizing Madagascar from India via long-distance dispersal, using India as a stepping stone.


Genera

* Subfamily Buergeriinae Channing, 1989 ** '' Buergeria'' Tschudi, 1838 * Subfamily Rhacophorinae Hoffman, 1932 (1858) ** '' Beddomixalus'' Abraham, Pyron, Ansil, Zachariah, and Zachariah, 2013 ** '' Chirixalus'' Boulenger, 1893 ** '' Chiromantis'' Peters, 1854 ** '' Feihyla'' Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006 ** '' Ghatixalus'' Biju, Roelants, and Bossuyt, 2008 ** '' Gracixalus'' Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2005 ** '' Kurixalus'' Ye, Fei, and Dubois, 1999 ** '' Leptomantis'' Peters, 1867 ** ''
Mercurana ''Mercurana'' is a genus of arboreal frogs belonging to the family Rhacophoridae. The genus was named from the only known species ''Mercurana myristicapalustris'', which was described in 2013 from the Western Ghats of Kerala, India. The generi ...
'' Abraham ''et al''., 2013 ** ''
Nasutixalus ''Nasutixalus'' is a genus of frogs in the family Rhacophoridae. The genus is found in northeastern India and adjacent southeastern Tibet as well as western Yunnan (China); the range might extend into the adjacent Nepal and Myanmar. Common name r ...
'' Jiang, Yan, Wang, and Che, 2016 ** '' Nyctixalus'' Boulenger, 1882 ** ''
Philautus ''Philautus'' is a genus of shrub frogs in the family Rhacophoridae from Asia. Some species in this genus are now considered extinct by IUCN, while others are widespread and abundant (such as the recently described ''P. abundus'', which was spec ...
'' Gistel, 1848 ** ''
Polypedates ''Polypedates'' is a genus of frogs in the family Rhacophoridae, the shrub frogs and Paleotropic tree frogs. They belong to subfamily Rhacophorinae. Members of this genus are collectively known as whipping frogs. They occur in eastern and sout ...
'' Tschudi, 1838 ** ''
Pseudophilautus ''Pseudophilautus'' is a genus of shrub frogs in the family Rhacophoridae endemic to the Western Ghats of southwestern India and to Sri Lanka where the majority of the species are found. Many of them are already extinct (marked with † in the ...
'' Laurent, 1943 ** ''
Raorchestes ''Raorchestes'' is a genus of frogs in the subfamily Rhacophorinae that are found in mountainous regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern China. A recent study places ''Raorchestes'' as a sister taxon of '' Pseudophilautus''. Befor ...
'' Biju, Shouche, Dubois, Dutta, and Bossuyt, 2010 ** ''
Rhacophorus ''Rhacophorus'' is a genus of frogs in the shrub frog family (Rhacophoridae) and the related Hylidae make up the true tree frogs. They are found in India, Japan, Madagascar, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Over 40 species are currently recognised. T ...
'' Kuhl and Van Hasselt, 1822 ** '' Rohanixalus'' Biju, Garg, Gokulakrishnan, Chandrakasan, Thammachoti, Ren, Gopika, Bisht, Hamidy, and Shouche, 2020 ** ''
Romerus ''Romerus'' is a small genus of Rhacophoridae, rhacophorid frogs that are distributed in southern China (Hong Kong, Hainan, Guangxi, Guangdong). Some species now in ''Romerus'' were originally placed in ''Philautus''. It is thought to be the most ...
'' Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021 ** '' Taruga'' Meegaskumbura, Meegaskumbura, Bowatte, Manamendra-Arachchi, Pethiyagoda, Hanken, and Schneider, 2010 ** '' Theloderma'' Tschudi, 1838 ** '' Vampyrius'' Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021 ** ''
Zhangixalus ''Zhangixalus'' is a genus of frogs in the subfamily Rhacophorinae, family (biology), family Rhacophoridae. They are collectively known as Zhang's treefrogs. They occur in the Eastern Himalayas, southern China, Taiwan, Japan, and southeast Asia. ...
'' Li, Jiang, Ren, and Jiang, 2019


Phylogeny

This phylogeny of the Rhacophoridae is from Yu et al. (2008):Yu Guohua, Rao Dingqi, Zhang Mingwang, Yang Junxing. Re-examination of the phylogeny of Rhacophoridae (Anura) based on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 50 (2009) 571–579. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.11.023


Parasites

As many frogs, rhacophorids harbour
monogenea Monogeneans are a group of ectoparasitic flatworms commonly found on the skin, gills, or fins of fish. They have a direct lifecycle and do not require an intermediate host. Adults are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female repro ...
ns worms in their
urinary bladder The urinary bladder, or simply bladder, is a hollow organ in humans and other vertebrates that stores urine from the kidneys before disposal by urination. In humans the bladder is a distensible organ that sits on the pelvic floor. Urine enters ...
s. The parasite species specialized to this family of frogs belong to the
genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...
''Indopolystoma'', described in 2019.


References

*


External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q56065 Amphibian families