Ecnomiohyla Faivovich, Haddad, Garcia, Frost, Campbell, and Wheeler, 2005

Duellman, William E., Marion, Angela B. & Hedges, Blair, 2016, Phylogenetics, classification, and biogeography of the treefrogs (Amphibia: Anura: Arboranae), Zootaxa 4104 (1), pp. 1-109 : 21

Ecnomiohyla Faivovich, Haddad, Garcia, Frost, Campbell, and Wheeler, 2005

Ecnomiohyla Faivovich, Haddad, Garcia, Frost, Campbell, and Wheeler, 2005 :100. Type species: Hypsiboas miliarius Cope, 1886 , by original designation.

Definition. Large treefrogs (SVL in males to 110 mm) with dermal fringes on the outer edges of the limbs, extensive webbing on the hands and feet, and an enlarged prepollex ( Fig. 7 B). Tadpoles with a LTRF of 2/3 and developing in water in tree holes.

Content. Twelve species: Ecnomiohyla bailarina* Batista, Hertz, Mebert, Köhler, Lotzkat, Ponce , and Vesely, echinata * (Duellman), fimbrimembra * (Taylor), miliaria (Cope) , minera (Wilson, McCranie, and Williams), phantasmagoria * (Dunn), rabborum Mendelson, Savage, Griffith, Ross, Kubicki , and Gagliardo, salvaje* (Wilson, McCranie, and Williams), sukia * Savage and Kubicki, thysanota * (Duellman), valancifer* (Firschein and Smith), and veraguensis * Batista, Hertz, Mebert, Köhler, Lotzkat, Ponce, and Vesely.

Distribution. Southern Mexico through Central America to western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador.

Etymology. According to Faivovich et al. (2005:100), “From the Greek, ecnomios, meaning marvelous, unusual …” The gender is feminine.

Remarks. Mendelson et al. (2008), Savage and Kubicki (2010), and Batista et al. (2014) have expanded our knowledge of this genus, which still contains species known only from their holotypes (e.g., Ecnomiohyla echinata and E. thysanota ). For more than half of a century, E. phantasmagoria has been known only from the holotype from the Río Cauca in Colombia, but recently was discovered in the Provincia de Esmeraldas in Ecuador (Ortega- Andrade et al. 2010).

Our tree ( Fig. 4 ) shows Ecnomiohyla rabborum as the sister species of E. malaria + E. minera . The most extensive molecular phylogenetic tree, based only on the 16S rRNA mitochondrial gene, of Ecnomiohyla contains six species ( Batista et al. 2014). In their maximum likelihood consensus tree, two well-supported clades are evident. One contains E. fimbrimembra as the sister species of E. rabborum + E. bailarina ; the second clade has E. miliaria as the sister species of E. sukia + E. veraguensis .

Mendelson et al. (2008) emphasized that the Amazonian “ Hyla tuberculosa ” Boulenger is not a member of Ecnomiohyla and should be designated incertae sedis. Savage and Kubicki (2010) regarded the placement of tuberculosa in Economiohyla as problematic because it lacked the synapomorphic morphological characters, principally an enlarged prepollex with keratinous spines, of the genus. We await molecular data for this species but herein we consider “ Hyla tuberculosa ” to be a member of the South American catch-all genus, Hypsiboas .

Figures

FIGURE 4. Maximum likelihood phylogeny of arboranan frogs based on DNA sequence data from 19 genes (16,128 aligned sites). The tree is rooted with Ceuthomantis smaragdinus, Dendrobates auratus, Haddadus binotatus, and Rhinoderma darwinii (not shown). Bootstrap support values are indicated at nodes.

FIGURE 7. A. Rheohyla miotympanum, KU 100965. Salto Cola de Caballo, 710 m, Nuevo León, Mexico. B. Ecnomiohyla miliaria, KU 101610, Finca Santa Clara, 1200 m, Chiriquí, Panama. Both by W. E. Duellman.