Carichyla Mahony, Donnellan & Richards, 2025

Donnellan, Stephen C., Mahony, Michael J., Esquerré, Damien, Brennan, Ian G., Price, Luke C., Lemmon, Alan, Lemmon, Emily Moriarty, Günther, Rainer, Monis, Paul, Bertozzi, Terry, Keogh, J. Scott, Shea, Glenn M. & Richards, Stephen J., 2025, Phylogenomics informs a generic revision of the Australo-Papuan treefrogs (Anura: Pelodryadidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 204 : -

Carichyla Mahony, Donnellan & Richards , gen. nov.

( Fig. 11)

ZooBank LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:565D5CC3-9C17-4BB6-8C76-D7DA56C0D699 Type species: Eucnemis bicolor Gray, 1842 .

Content: Two species— Carichyla bicolor * (Gray, 1842) comb. nov., Carichyla viranula ( Menzies, Richards & Tyler, 2008) comb. nov.

Diagnosis: Carichyla can be diagnosed from members of the Drymomantis Sub-clade as follows: from Amnihyla except A. amnicola by pigmented vs. unpigmented eggs. It can be diagnosed from A. amnicola by the absence vs. presence of prominent tubercles on the hindlimb. It can be diagnosed from Exochohyla by a Type 1 vs. Type 1A tadpole oral disc and Type 1 vs. Type 6 overall tadpole morphology; from Exedrobatrachus by unornamented vs. tubercules on hindlimb, and toe disc equal to finger discs vs. smaller; from Hyalotos by a pigmented vs. transparent tympanum, small vs. medium or large eggs, absent vs. crenulated hindlimbs and spike, and fusiform vs. teardrop call envelope shape, a note rate change across the call vs. none; from Ischnohyla by a Type 1 vs. Type 3 tadpole oral disc, Type 1 vs. Type 2A overall tadpole morphology, and by spike-fusiform vs. left triangular, or left teardrop or oval call envelope shape, a note rate change across the call vs. none; from Kallistobatrachus by a Type 1 vs. Type 1B tadpole oral disc, Type 1 vs. Type 7 overall tadpole morphology, unornamented vs. tubercles or crenulations on the hindlimbs, and presence vs. absence of the alary process of the hyoid; from Lathrana by unornamented vs. tubercules on hindlimb, small vs. medium eggs, toe disc equal to finger discs vs. smaller, and presence vs. absence of the alary process of the hyoid, and spike-fusiform vs. oval call envelope shape, a note rate change across the call vs. none; from Nasutibatrachus and Teretistes by the absence of a rostral spike; further from Teretistes by small vs. large eggs, toe webbing reduced or fully webbed vs. minimally webbed, small vs. large egg size, a Type 1 vs. Type 3 tadpole oral disc, and spike-fusiform vs. triangular call envelope shape; from Viridihyla by small vs. large egg size, ossified vs. cartilaginous intercalary structure and presence vs. absence of the alary process of the hyoid. Carichyla can be diagnosed from Drymomantis by the presence vs. the absence of an unbroken lateral white stripe from the under the eye to the groin ( Figs 11, 15), by a spike-fusiform vs. fusiform-spike call envelope shape ( Table 2) and by 31 sites in the mitochondrial ND4 alignment ( Table 3). Carichyla can be diagnosed from Papuahyla by presence vs.absence of the alary process of the hyoid, and a spike-fusiform vs. right triangular call envelope shape ( Table 2) and by 13 sites in the mitochondrial ND4 alignment ( Table 3). Refer to Tables 1, 2, and 3. Diagnosis of Carichyla from all other genera in the Drymomantis Sub-clade is supported by 189 sites distributed across eight AHE loci (Supporting Information, AHE loci diagnostic sites).

Distribution and ecology: Northern and eastern Australia and southern New Guinea. Arboreal frogs that are found in open permanent or seasonal grassy, sedge, or sago swamps in natural or altered lowland habitats, usually not in closed forests ( Menzies 2006, Anstis 2017).

Etymology: The generic name for sedges, Carex (Latin) refers to a common name for the group ‘sedge frogs’. The stem for combining with other nouns is caric - (the study of sedges is caricology). See etymology for Amnihyla above for the derivation of Hyla .

Remarks: Carichyla is the equivalent to part of the Litoria bicolor Group of Tyler and Davies (1978). In the absence of genetic data for Litoria viranula , conservatively we have included it in Carichyla on the basis that Menzies et al. (2008) found it closest to L. bicolor in their multivariate analysis of morphometric variables. We also note that James' (1997) analysis of genetic data showed that C. bicolor is an unresolved species complex which is also consistent with the diversity for this taxon in our ND4 data ( Fig. 1).