Eastern spadefoot toads (''Leptobrachium'', also known as large-eyed litter frogs) comprise a genus of the family

Megophryidae Megophryidae, commonly known as goose frogs, is a large family of frogs native to the warm southeast of Asia, from the Himalayan foothills eastwards, south to Indonesia and the Greater Sunda Islands in Maritime Southeast Asia, and extending to th ...

in the order Anura, and are found in southern China, northeast India, southeast Asia, and islands of the

Sunda Shelf Geologically, the Sunda Shelf is a south-eastern extension of the continental shelf of Mainland Southeast Asia. Major landmasses on the shelf include the Bali, Borneo, Java, Madura, and Sumatra, as well as their surrounding smaller islands. ...

as well as 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 ...

. They are characterized by a stocky body with slender, short hindlimbs. In identifying species, iris colour is a valuable diagnostic morphological characteristic (see '' Leptobrachium bompu'' for an example of a blue-eyed species); the iris has uniform colour in some species, whereas in other species the upper half is coloured and the lower half is dark. Hudson Fu PLoS ONE 2013 Leptobrachium boringii A

Hudson Fu PLoS ONE 2013 Leptobrachium boringii A

The

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

of ''Leptobrachium'' is a

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

that includes '' Scutiger'' and ''

Oreolalax ''Oreolalax'' is a genus of amphibian in the family Megophryidae. They are mostly endemic to southwestern China, with one species in northern Vietnam ('' Oreolalax sterlingae''), and possibly extending into adjacent Laos. There is also a popul ...

''.

Subgenera

Two

subgenera In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between t ...

, ''Leptobrachium'' and ''Vibrissaphora'', are recognized; the latter was originally described as a genus, with '' Vibrissaphora boringii'' as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

. These subgenera (or genera) were originally separated by presence (in ''Vibrissaphora'', hence the common name moustache or spiny toad) and absence of nuptial spines on the upper labium in males during the breeding season (in ''Leptobrachium''). Later genetic analyses have not supported this original separation, but still indicate the presence of two distinct

s. These clades can be referred to as subgenera ''Leptobrachium'' and ''Vibrissaphora'', but their contents differ from the earlier, purely morphological definition (''Vibrissaphora'' contains all spiny species, but also non-spiny ones). Subgenus ''Vibrissaphora'' thus defined is distributed in southern China and Indochina, and subgenus ''Leptobrachium'' in the

Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula (Malay: ''Semenanjung Tanah Melayu'') is a peninsula in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The area ...

and the

Malay Archipelago The Malay Archipelago (Indonesian/Malay: , tgl, Kapuluang Malay) is the archipelago between mainland Indochina and Australia. It has also been called the " Malay world," "Nusantara", "East Indies", Indo-Australian Archipelago, Spices Archipe ...

northwest of the

Wallace Line The Wallace Line or Wallace's Line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a tran ...

. No morphological character that could uniquely separate the subgenera has yet been identified.

Species

As of mid-2019, there were 36 recognized species: and one proposed species

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q862835 Megophryidae Amphibians of Asia Amphibian genera Taxa named by Johann Jakob von Tschudi