Calyptocephalellidae
The family Calyptocephalellidae is confined to Chile, and contains two genera, Calyptocephalella and Telmatobufo. Calyptocephalella gayi, the Helmeted Water Toad, is the sole species within its genus and was formerly known as Caudiverbera caudiverbera. Helmeted Water Toads are large aquatic frogs, with females reaching up to 320 mm SVL. The other genus within this family, Telmatobufo, contains three species which live in or next to fast-flowing streams in temperate Nothofagus forest and are very rarely encountered (Telmatobufo venustus has been recorded once in the past 100 years.).
This family has undergone taxonomic revision since it was originally named Batrachophrynidae (Frost et al. 2006), but then had to be renamed to Calyptocephalellidae (Frost 2007) when it was realized that prior karyotypic work by Córdova and Descailleaux (2005) had suggested that the genus Batrachophrynus was actually aligned with Telmatobius and thus nested within the family Ceratophryidae.
Calyptocephalella gayi
Photo by José Grau
(Click for details)Literature cited:
Córdova, J. and Descailleaux, J. (2005), in Lavilla, E. O., and De la Riva, I. (Eds.) 2005. Studies on the Andean frogs of the genera Telmatobius and Batrachophrynus. Asociación Herpetológica Española, Monografías de Herpetología 7, Valencia, Spain.
Frost, D. R., Grant, T., Faivovich, J., Bain, R. H., Haas, A., Haddad, C. F. B., de Sá, R. O., Channing, A., Wilkinson, M., Donnellan, S. C., Raxworthy, C. J., Campbell, J. A., Blotto, B. L., Moler, P., Drewes, R. C., Nussbaum, R. A., Lynch, J. D., Green, D. M., and Wheeler, W. C. (2006). The amphibian tree of life. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297, 1-370.
Frost, D. R. (2007). Amphibian Species of the World Online, version 5.0.
Genus Calyptocephallela (1 species)
Calyptocephallela gayi species account photos no range maps no sounds
Genus Telmatobufo (3 species)
Telmatobufo australis no species account no photos no range maps no sounds Telmatobufo bullocki no species account no photos no range maps no sounds Telmatobufo venustus no species account photos no range maps no sounds
Citation: AmphibiaWeb: Information on amphibian biology and conservation. [web application]. 2010. Berkeley, California: AmphibiaWeb. Available: http://amphibiaweb.org/. (Accessed: 2010).
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