Phyllomedusidae

Phyllomedusidae  is a family of frogs that live in the Neotropics in North America, South America, and nearby islands.  They are called leaf frogs in English. Some scientists say it is a subfamily of the family Hylidae, the tree frogs. Other scientists say it is a sister clade to Hylidae instead.

The family could be a sister group to the Australian treefrogs (Pelodryadidae), a family of frogs that live in Australia and New Guinea. Scientists think this is possible even though the two groups of frogs live very far away from each other, on different continents. All these frogs could have come from the same ancestor frog that lived in early Cenozoic in South America, where the Phyllomedusidae still live. The two families of frogs would have split from one another during the Eocene period. The ancestors of Pelodryadidae probably colonized Australasia from South America by going through Antarctica, which at the time was not yet frozen over. The clade with both families is sister to the Hylidae, from which they split apart in the early Paleogene.

 Taxonomy 
The family Phyllomedusidae contains the following genera:
 Agalychnis (14 species)
 Callimedusa (6 species)
 Cruziohyla  (3 species)
 Hylomantis – rough leaf frogs (2 species)
 Phasmahyla – shining leaf frogs (8 species)
 Phrynomedusa – colored leaf frogs (5 living species, plus 1 recently extinct)
 Phyllomedusa (16 species)
 Pithecopus (11 species)

 References 

 Other websites 

 Amphibian Species of the World
 http://www.tolweb.org/Phyllomedusinae 
 http://amphibiaweb.org/lists/Hylidae.shtml

Category:Frogs of South America
Category:Frogs of North America