Ranoidea Tschudi, 1838: 76

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 : -

Ranoidea Tschudi, 1838: 76

( Fig. 29)

Synonymy Polyphone Gistel, 1848 :xi (replacement name for Ranoidea , created because Gistel did not like Ranoidea , not for any nomenclatural invalidity of Ranoidea ).

Ranhyla M’Coy, 1867: 182 (type species aurea , although M’Coy’s use of the name aurea would have been a misidentification of raniformis ).

Chirodryas Keferstein, 1867: 358 (type species raniformis ).

Fanchonia Werner, 1893: 82 (type species elegans [ = aurea ]).

Type species: Ranoidea jacksoniensis Tschudi, 1838 , by monotypy. Ranoidea jacksoniensis is a synonym of Rana aurea Lesson, 1829 ( Cogger et al. 1983).

Content: Five species— Ranoidea aurea * ( Lesson, 1829) , Ranoidea castanea * ( Steindachner, 1867) comb. nov., Ranoidea cyclorhyncha * ( Boulenger, 1882) , Ranoidea moorei * ( Copland, 1957) , Ranoidea raniformis * ( Keferstein, 1867) .

Diagnosis: Ranoidea can be diagnosed from members of its sister clade comprising Cyclorana , Leptobatrachus , and Megatestis as follows: from Cyclorana by small vs. large inner metatarsal tubercles; by ossified intercalary structures vs. their absence in Cyclorana (13 species) and vs. cartilaginous in Leptobatrachus ; by the presence of a vocal sac vs. absence in Megatestis ; by overall tadpole morphology Type 1 vs. Type 3 or 4 in Cyclorana , Leptobatrachus , and Megatestis ; by a tonal call type vs. pulsatile in Cyclorana and pulse repetition in Megatestis . Ranoidea can be diagnosed further from Leptobatrachus and Megatestis by the presence of the m. extensor brevis medius digiti IV vs. absence. Refer to Tables 1 and 2.

Distribution and ecology: Terrestrial frogs that breed in still or slowly flowing water in ephemeral and permanent waterbodies in grasslands, riverine billabongs, and forests in south-western and south-eastern Australia.

Etymology: Tschudi (1838) did not give an explicit etymology but referred to the superficial similarity of his species jacksoniensis to the true frogs ( Rana ), and the name presumably means Rana -like. The suffix – oidea is neo-Latin, and the neuter plural of – oideus. However, as the Code only includes ancient and medieval Latin in its definition of Latin, the gender must be determined by Article 30.2. With the only included species having a gender that could be either masculine or feminine, but not neuter, Article 30.2.4 must be invoked to consider the gender feminine.

Remarks: Ranoidea is in part the equivalent of the Litoria aurea Group of Tyler and Davies (1978) in which M. dahlii and C. alboguttata also were included.

For Hyla aurea var. cyclorhynchus Boulenger, 1882 , the specific epithet ends in the neuter Greek term rhynchos (= nose, a noun), but Boulenger used it with the masculine ending rhynchus. Subsequently, the epithet has been treated consistently as an adjective, becoming cyclorhyncha in Litoria , which we have retained for its association with Ranoidea .