The southern frogs form the Leptodactylidae, a name that comes from Greek meaning a bird or other animal having slender toes. They are a diverse

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...

s that most likely diverged from other hyloids during the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

. The family has undergone major taxonomic revisions in recent years, including the reclassification of the former subfamily Eleutherodactylinae into its own family the Eleutherodactylidae; the Leptodactylidae now number 206 species in 13 genera distributed throughout

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

, the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

, and Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. The family includes terrestrial, burrowing, aquatic, and arboreal members, inhabiting a wide range of habitats. Several of the genera within the Leptodactylidae lay their eggs in foam nests. These can be in crevices, on the surface of water, or on forest floors. These foam nests are some of the most varied among frogs. When eggs hatch in nests on the forest floor, the tadpoles remain within the nest, without eating, until

metamorphosis Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and different ...

Classification

As of December 2019, the Amphibian Species of the World classifies the following genera in the family Leptodactylidae: * Subfamily Leiuperinae Bonaparte, 1850 (90 species) ** '' Edalorhina'' Jiménez de la Espada, 1870 ** '' Engystomops'' Jiménez de la Espada, 1872 ** '' Physalaemus'' Fitzinger, 1826 ** '' Pleurodema'' Tschudi, 1838 ** '' Pseudopaludicola'' Miranda-Ribeiro, 1926 * Subfamily Leptodactylinae Werner, 1896 (1838) (96 species) ** '' Adenomera'' Steindachner, 1867 ** '' Hydrolaetare'' Gallardo, 1963 ** '' Leptodactylus'' Fitzinger, 1826 ** '' Lithodytes'' Fitzinger, 1843 * Subfamily Paratelmatobiinae Ohler and Dubois, 2012 (13 species) ** '' Crossodactylodes'' Cochran, 1938 ** '' Paratelmatobius'' Lutz and Carvalho, 1958 ** '' Rupirana'' Heyer, 1999 ** '' Scythrophrys'' Lynch, 1971 * Incertae sedis ** "''Leptodactylus''" ''ochraceus'' Lutz, 1930

References

External links

Leptodactylidae, from the Tree of Life Web Project

Leptodactylidae taxonomy, from the NCBI taxonomy browser

Leptodactylid description, from AmphibiaWeb
{{Authority control Amphibian families Maastrichtian first appearances Taxa named by Franz Werner Fauna of the Neotropical realm