Stumpffia

Quality 0.50 · 2 views · Updated 2 months ago

Genus of amphibians

title: "Stumpffia" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["stumpffia", "cophylinae", "endemic-frogs-of-madagascar", "amphibian-genera", "taxa-named-by-oskar-boettger"] description: "Genus of amphibians" topic_path: "general/stumpffia" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpffia" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Genus of amphibians ::

| image = Stumpffia sp., Marojejy, Madagascar (4023091420).jpg | image_caption = Unidentified Stumpffia in Marojejy | taxon = Stumpffia | authority = Boettger, 1881 | type_species = Stumpffia psologlossa | type_species_authority = Boettger, 1881 | diversity_link = #Species | diversity = 41 species

Stumpffia is a genus of microhylid frogs that are endemic to Madagascar. They are mostly brown frogs that typically live among leaf litter. S. contumelia has a snout–vent length of about 8-9 mm, making it one of the world's smallest frogs, and several others in the genus are only slightly larger. The largest species is no more than 28 mm.

The majority of the species have only been described since 2010. Each species has a small range and many are seriously threatened.

Taxonomy

Stumpffia was first described from the single species Stumpffia psologlossa Boettger, 1881, based on a single specimen collected on Nosy Be, a large island off the northwest coast of Madagascar, by Antonio Stumpff. By 2017, 15 species were recognised. In late 2017, a major revision of the genus was published. This study used integrative taxonomy, i.e. the combination of multiple different datasets, to delimit and describe new species: it combined morphological, morphometric, chromatic (color), bioacoustic (voice), and genetic data to provide new data on the 15 described species of Stumpffia, and describe a further 26 new species.

Debate on synonymy with ''Rhombophryne''

The genus Stumpffia was proposed to be a junior synonym of Rhombophryne in 2016, but this proposal was disputed and reversed by authors of a subsequent study, on the basis of their reciprocal monophyly and consistent morphological differences between the two genera that allow them to be distinguished. The latter study established a new genus, Anilany for "Stumpffia" helenae, a species that would otherwise have rendered Stumpffia paraphyletic, and which is morphologically and genetically highly distinct from any species of Rhombophryne or Stumpffia.

This debate was continued in 2017, with one group of authors continuing to advocate for synonymy of these two genera plus Anilany, while the other group of authors continued to advocate for separate treatment of these genera based on their monophyly and morphological distinction allowing them to be distinguished with comparative ease. There was a temporary impasse, wherein the Amphibian Species of the World database continued to adopt the single-genus taxonomy, and as a result, so too did the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species and other online databases (e.g. iNaturalist) that draw from that resource. Meanwhile, AmphibiaWeb continued to use the three-genus taxonomy, as did the taxonomists working on cophyline systematics, and other groups working more broadly on frog evolution and taxonomy.

In March 2019, a new genus, Mini, was described for the miniaturised frogs previously confused with Stumpffia that are more closely related to Plethodontohyla. Evidence in this study, as well as that presented in a paper by Na Tu et al. in 2018, helped to clarify the taxonomic situation, and the Amphibian Species of the World database reverted to treating Rhombophryne, Anilany, and Stumpffia as valid genera.

Species

There are over 40 currently recognised species:

References

References

  1. (2022). "''Stumpffia'' Boettger, 1881".
  2. (18 December 2017). "10 Smallest Frogs and Toads in the World". gonefroggin.com.
  3. (28 January 2020). "Stumpffia". IUCN Redlist.
  4. Boettger, Oskar. (1881). "Diagnoses Reptilium et Batrachiorum novorum ab ill. Antonio Stumpff in insula Nossi Bé Madagascariensi lectorum". Zoologischer Anzeiger.
  5. (2017). "Describing the smaller majority: Integrative fast-track taxonomy reveals twenty-six new species of tiny microhylid frogs (genus ''Stumpffia'') from Madagascar". Vertebrate Zoology.
  6. (2016). "The impact of anchored phylogenomics and taxon sampling on phylogenetic inference in narrow-mouthed frogs (Anura, Microhylidae)". Cladistics.
  7. (2016). "Reconciling molecular phylogeny, morphological divergence and classification of Madagascan narrow-mouthed frogs (Amphibia: Microhylidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
  8. (2017). "Nomenclatural stability does not justify recognition of paraphyletic taxa: A response to Scherz et al. (2016)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
  9. (2017). "Lumping or splitting in the Cophylinae (Anura: Microhylidae) and the need for a parsimony of taxonomic changes: a response to Peloso et al. (2017)". Salamandra.
  10. (2017-02-24). "Diamond in the rough: a new species of fossorial diamond frog (Rhombophryne) from Ranomafana National Park, southeastern Madagascar". Zoosystematics and Evolution.
  11. (2017-06-06). "A review of the taxonomy and osteology of the Rhombophryne serratopalpebrosa species group (Anura: Microhylidae) from Madagascar, with comments on the value of volume rendering of micro-CT data to taxonomists". Zootaxa.
  12. (2017-07-18). "Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  13. (September 2018). "A large-scale phylogeny of Microhylidae inferred from a combined dataset of 121 genes and 427 taxa". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
  14. (2019-03-27). "Morphological and ecological convergence at the lower size limit for vertebrates highlighted by five new miniaturised microhylid frog species from three different Madagascan genera". PLOS ONE.
  15. American Museum of Natural History. "Rhombophryne Botteger, 1880".
  16. (2015). "Beautiful bright belly: A distinctive new microhylid frog (Amphibia: ''Stumpffia'') from eastern Madagascar". Zootaxa.
  17. (2020-05-18). "A new stump-toed frog from the transitional forests of NW Madagascar (Anura, Microhylidae, Cophylinae, Stumpffia)". ZooKeys.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

stumpffiacophylinaeendemic-frogs-of-madagascaramphibian-generataxa-named-by-oskar-boettger