Late News on Hyloid Frogs

One of the most interesting of anuran groups – in my humble opinion – is Hyloidea, also known as Hyloides…. Caption: a montage of hyloid frogs relevant to this article. From left to right: a young Helmeted water frog (or toad) or Gay’s water frog Calyptocephalella gayi, an australobatrachian, Southern cricket frog Acris gryllus, a hylid, and Common toad Bufo bufo, a bufonid. Images: Asiel Olivares, CC BY 4.0 (original here); Stephen Friedt, CC BY-SA 3.0 (original here); Darren Naish. As you might guess from the name, this is the major clade that include hylids (true treefrogs) in addition to glass frogs, true toads, poison dart frogs and so on. Large phylogenetic studies of anurans mostly do find hyloids to be a clade, though one area of disagreement concerns whether the Australo-Papuan or southern frogs, plus some associated South American taxa, should be included within the group or merely considered close to it (Frost et al. 2006, Pyron et al. 2011). Here, we look briefly at some…