Teretistes Richards, Mahony & Donnellan, 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 : -

Teretistes Richards, Mahony & Donnellan , gen. nov.

( Fig. 33)

ZooBank LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:1C8072BD-3776-4D70-BBA2-8ACE4E1A3495 Type species: Litoria havina Menzies, 1993 .

Content: One species— Teretistes havina * ( Menzies, 1993) comb. nov.

Diagnosis: Teretistes can be diagnosed from other members of the Drymomantis Sub-clade by a combination of rostral spike only present in males, expanded finger and toe discs, large pigmented eggs, a Type 3 tadpole oral disc, high call dominant frequency, call frequency modulation, and triangular call envelope shape. Refer to Tables 1 and 2.

Distribution and ecology: Arboreal frogs that breed in small ponds in rainforest on mainland New Guinea. Eggs are deposited on leaves above water and following development free-swimming tadpoles drop into water below ( Richards 2002). Tadpoles have striking black and gold pattern ( Richards 2002).

Etymology: From the Greek τεΡέτισμα (teretisma, a whistling), with the masculine suffix -ῐστής (- istes, an agent, one who), alluding to the whistling call that also provides the specific epithet.

Remarks: A rostral spike is present only in males. While presently conceived as a monotypic lineage, a wide geographic survey of mitochondrial DNA sequence variation in Teretistes havina indicates that it is a species complex (Richards and Donnellan, unpublished data).