''Ranoidea'' is a genus of frogs in the subfamily

Pelodryadinae Pelodryadinae, also known as Australian treefrogs (although not all members are arboreal), is a subfamily of frogs found in the region of Australia and New Guinea, and have also been introduced to New Caledonia, Guam, New Zealand, and Vanuatu. ...

. They are found in Australia,

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

, and two nearby groups of islands: the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

, and the

Louisiade Archipelago The Louisiade Archipelago is a string of ten larger volcanic islands frequently fringed by coral reefs, and 90 smaller coral islands in Papua New Guinea. It is located 200 km southeast of New Guinea, stretching over more than and spread ...

. The

circumscription Circumscription may refer to: *Circumscribed circle * Circumscription (logic) *Circumscription (taxonomy) *Circumscription theory The circumscription theory is a theory of the role of warfare in state formation in political anthropology, created ...

of this taxon is still controversial. Cyclorana novaehollandiae07

Taxonomy

Species in this genus were until recently placed in the then-

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

genus ''

Litoria ''Litoria'' is a genus of hylid tree frogs, sometimes collectively referred to as Australasian treefrogs, that are native to Australia, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the Moluccan Islan ...

''; many of them had been placed in even larger ''

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 t ...

'' before. However, in 2016 Duellman and colleagues split ''Litoria'' into several genera. The systematic and taxonomic conclusions based on Duellman ''et al.'' should be treated with caution, because 78.9% of individuals (397/503) used in the concatenated analyses had less than half of the gene sequences available for the 19 genes used. Missing data can be problematic in phylogenetic analyses (e.g.) and lead to erroneous conclusions about systematic relationships. Additionally, there is no mention of checking for base-composition bias amongst taxa (non-stationarity), which can also lead to incorrect tree phylogenies (e.g.). The species now in ''Ranoidea'' were placed in the genus ''Dryopsophus''. However, the oldest available name for these species is ''Ranoidea''. These changes are not yet widely recognized or accepted,McDonald, K.R., Rowley, J.J., Richards, S.J., & Frankham, G.J. (2016). A new species of treefrog (Litoria) from Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Zootaxa 4171(1): 153-169. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4171.1.6 and the AmphibiaWeb continues to recognize ''Litoria'' in the older, broad sense. The AmphibiaWeb also recognizes '' Cyclorana'', a position that, without additional amendments, renders ''Ranoidea'' paraphyletic; it may be treated as a

subgenus 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 betw ...

Description and ecology

The

pupil The pupil is a black hole located in the center of the iris of the eye that allows light to strike the retina.Cassin, B. and Solomon, S. (1990) ''Dictionary of Eye Terminology''. Gainesville, Florida: Triad Publishing Company. It appears black ...

is horizontally elliptical, and the

palpebral An eyelid is a thin fold of skin that covers and protects an eye Eyes are organs of the visual system. They provide living organisms with vision, the ability to receive and process visual detail, as well as enabling several photo respon ...

membrane is unpigmented. Many species have

tadpole A tadpole is the larval stage in the biological life cycle of an amphibian. Most tadpoles are fully aquatic, though some species of amphibians have tadpoles that are terrestrial. Tadpoles have some fish-like features that may not be found ...

s that develop in mountain streams and have enlarged ventral mouths. However, tadpoles of subgenus ''Cyclorana'' are adapted to standing water and are often found in temporary water bodies.

Species

The following species are recognised in the genus ''Ranoidea'': Although currently listed as ''

incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertain ...

'', it is expected that "''

Ranoidea papua The Ranoidea are a superfamily of frogs in the order Anura. Members of this superfamily are characterised by having the pectoral girdle fused into a single complex unit, having no ribs, and using an axillary grip during amplexus. The larvae ha ...

''" (Van Kampen, 1909) will also be included in the genus once its range has been properly delimited.

References

{{taxonbar, from=Q24813105 Amphibian genera Taxa named by Johann Jakob von Tschudi