Barbarophryne Beukema, de Pous, Donaire-Barroso, Bogaerts, Garcia-Porta, Escoriza, Arribas, El Mouden & Carranza

BEUKEMA, WOUTER, DE POUS, PHILIP, DONAIRE-BARROSO, DAVID, BOGAERTS, SERGÉ, GARCIA-PORTA, JOAN, ESCORIZA, DANIEL, ARRIBAS, OSCAR J., MOUDEN, EL HASSAN EL & CARRANZA, SALVADOR, 2013, 3661, Zootaxa 3661 (1), pp. 1-60 : 39-40

Barbarophryne Beukema, de Pous, Donaire-Barroso, Bogaerts, Garcia-Porta, Escoriza, Arribas, El Mouden & Carranza , gen. nov.

Bufo — Hoogmoed 1972. Zoologische Mededelingen 47 (5): 50.

Pseudepidalea — Frost et al. 2006. Bulletin American Museum of Natural History, 297: 365.

Bufo (Epidalea) —Doglio et al. 2008. Atti VIII Congresso Nazionale Societas Herpetologica Italica: 183. “ Pseudepidalea ”— Van Bocxlaer et al. 2009. BMC Evolutionary Biology 9: 131.

Pseudoepidalea — García-Muñoz et al. 2009. Herpetology Notes 2: 231. Incorrect subsequent spelling.

Type species. Bufo brongersmai Hoogmoed 1972 , by present designation.

Definition and diagnosis. Barbarophryne gen. nov. can be distinguished from other bufonid genera by the combination of the following characters: (i) small-sized adults (up to 51 mm in females); (ii) absence of warts on the dorsal surface of the head; (iii) almost circular parotoid glands (near as wide as long – at most 1½ times as long as wide –); (iv) nearly round tympanum; (v) absence of a gland in the tibia; (vi) paired distal subarticular tubercle on the fourth toe. Barbarophryne gen. nov. exhibits 2n = 22 biarmed chromosomes, with a noticeable decrease in size between larger elements (pairs 1–6) and the remaining five pairs. Pairs 1–6 and 11 are metacentric, whereas pairs 7–10 are submetacentric (Herrero et al. 1993). Although the basic karyotypic characteristics of B. brongersmai are similar to the members of the former Bufo species , it differs from Amietophrynus which generally show 20 chromosomes. Herrero et al. (1993) compared the C-band pattern of B. brongersmai to the patterns studied by Schmid (1978, 1980) for B. bufo , E. calamita and B. viridis , and recovered two main differences: (i) a low number of telomeric C-bands (only pairs 6 and 8); and (ii) a pronounced pericentromeric band in the short arm of pair 4.

Etymology (derivatio nominis). Barbaro (Latin, Barbaris, relative to Barbary, NW African region north of the Sahara) and phryne (from Phrynos (m) / Phryne (f), Greek for toad). The generic name is feminine.

Distribution. South-western Maghreb region of North Africa. Currently endemic to Morocco and the northernmost Western Sahara, but expected to occur in Algeria.

Species included. Barbarophryne brongersmai ( Hoogmoed 1972) comb. nov. Monotypic.

Taxonomic comment. Hoogmoed (1972) described Brongersma’s toad from the vicinity of Tiznit near the Moroccan Atlantic coast, which he tentatively placed within the “ B. viridis - B. calamita group” based on morphological similarities. Subsequent research in the context of larval morphology, karyology, osteology and bioacoustics however revealed B. brongersmai to be well-diverged from all other bufonid taxa in the Western Palearctic ( Grillitsch et al. 1989; Herrero et al. 1993; Delfino et al. 2009; Doglio et al. 2009). The majority of authors dealing with B. brongersmai during the last decades assumed a sister relationship with B. boulengeri , which eventually led to the attribution of B. brongersmai to the newly erected ‘Green Toad’ genus Pseudepidalea by Frost et al. (2006). In turn, Dubois and Bour (2010) revealed Pseudepidalea to represent a junior objective synonym of Bufotes , thereby giving priority to the latter as nomen for the Green Toad group. Subsequent mtDNA and nDNA analyses by Stöck et al. (2006), Van Bocxlaer et al. (2009), Pyron and Wiens (2011) and Garcia-Porta et al. (2012) recovered a polyphyletic pattern amongst the ‘Green Toads’ due to the inclusion of B. brongersmai , which was confirmed by the analyses presented herein ( Fig. 6 ). The phylogenetic position of the present study reveals that B. brongersmai is most likely related to the clade of Eurasian toads (see Results section). In summary, we base our decision to place B. brongersmai in the newly erected genus Barbarophryne gen. nov. on the following priority TNC (sensu Vences et al. 2013); (i) Clade Stability (in favour of higher clade stability for Bufotes by exclusion of B. brongersmai ) and (ii) Phenotypic Diagnosability (tadpole morphology: Grillitsch et al. 1989; bioacoustics: Doglio et al. 2009; current paper; osteology: Delfino et al. 2009), in addition to the secondary TNC Adaptive Zone (apparent from unique osteological adaptations to life in arid environments; Delfino et al. 2009).

Figures

FIGURE 6. Time-calibrated tree showing the radiation of the family Bufonidae and the most likely phylogenetic position of Barbarophryne gen. nov. The dots represent nodes with posterior probabilities (pp) greater than 0.8. The colors, from blue to red, order the nodes from lower to high support.