Colomascirtus, Duellman, William E., Marion, Angela B. & Hedges, Blair, 2016

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 : 30-31

Colomascirtus new genus

Colomascirtus . Type species: Hyla larinopygion Duellman, 1973 .

Definition. Large, colorful frogs attaining SVLs of more than 70 mm ( Fig. 12A ); cloacal region swollen; white parietal peritoneum and mental gland absent; stream-dwelling tadpoles with large oral discs directed ventrally and having one or two complete rows of marginal papillae; LTRF 4–14/6–17. Chromosome complement unknown.

Content. Seventeen species: Colomascirtus antioquia* (Rivera-Correa & Faivovich) , armatus (Boulenger) , caucanus* (Ardila-Robayo, Ruiz-Carranza, & Rua-Trujillo), charazani (Vellard) , chlorosteus* (Reynolds & Foster), condor* (Almendáriz, Brito-M., Batallas-R. & Ron), criptico (Coloma, Carvajal-Endara, Dueñas, Paredes- Recalde, Morales-Mite, Almeida-Reinoso, Tapia, Hutter, Toral-Contreras & Guayasamin), larinopygion (Duellman) , lindae (Duellman & Altig) , pacha (Duellman & Hillis) , pantostictus (Duellman & Berger) , princecharlesi (Coloma, Carvajal-Endara, Dueñas, Paredes-Recalde, Morales-Mite, Almeida-Reinoso, Tapia, Hutter, Toral-Contreras & Guayasamin) , psarolaimus (Duellman & Hillis) , ptychodactylus (Duellman & Hillis) , staufferorum (Duellman & Coloma) , tapichalaca (Kizirian, Coloma & Paredes-Recalde) , and tigrinus (Mueses- Cisneros, & Anganoy-Criollo), all new combinations.

Distribution. Cloud forest and subparamo in the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador, and in southern Peru and Bolivia.

Etymology. The generic name is a patronym for Luis A. Coloma in combination with the Greek scirtao verb meaning to leap. Coloma has been a principal researcher on, and conservationist of, frogs in the northern Andes. The gender is masculine.

Remarks. Members of Colomascirtus were first defined as the Hyla larinopygion Group by Duellman and Hillis (1990) and subsequently by Duellman et al. (1997) and Rivera-Correa & Faivovich (2013). Coloma et al. (2012) provided a thorough account of the morphology, osteology, development, calls, and ecology of the species in the genus. A detailed morphological study of the tadpoles by Sánchez (2010) revealed two structures (shelf on upper jaw sheath and crown-like ornamentation around naris) that help define two groups of species that are not concordant with the then recognized Hyla bogotensis and Hyla larinopygion groups ( Coloma et al 2012).

Two species, Colomascirtus armatus and C. charazani , have been placed in a group variously recognized as the Hyla armata Group (Duellman et al. 1997) or the Hyloscirtus armatus Group (De la Riva et al. 2000; Lötters et al. 2005). These two species occur in southern Peru and Bolivia, leaving a gap of more than 2000 km from southern Ecuador to southern Peru. Males of these large frogs have clusters of keratinized spines on the prepollex and on the proximal ventral surface of the humerus ( Fig. 12 B). The LTRF in tadpoles is 13–14/16–17, notably greater than in other species of Colomascirtus , 4–9/6–12 ( Sánchez 2010). In our tree ( Fig. 4 ) C. armatus and C. charazani are in a well-supported (100%) clade that is sister of all other Colomascirtus . This same arrangement was shown in molecular phylogenetic trees by Faivovich et al. (2005), Wiens et al (2010), Pyron & Wiens (2011), Coloma et al (2012), and Rivera-Correa & Faivovich (2013). In the phylogenetic analysis by Almendáriz at al (2014), a different topology was recovered with C. armatus and C. charazani as sister taxa of Hyloscirtus ; however their arrangement had less support and was based on fewer genes than those by Coloma et al (2012) and Rivera- Correa & Faivovich (2013).

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 12. A. Colomascirtus lindae, KU 164402, 11 km east-southeast Papallacta, 2660 m, Napo, Ecuador. B. Colomascirtus armatus, KU 173221, Buenos Aires, 2400 m, Cusco, Peru (note humeral spines and hypertrophied forearm). C. Hyloscirtus bogotensis, KU 169437, Parque Arqueológico San Agustín, 1750 m, Huila, Colombia. D. Hyloscirtus alytolylax, KU 207706, 4 km NE Dos Ríos, 1149 m, Pichincha, Ecuador. All by W. E. Duellman.