. The biology of the amphibia. Amphibians. 524 THE BIOLOGY OF THE AMPHIBIA There remain in the Cornuferinae three monotypic genera to discuss. All of these are very rare, disced species allied to Cornufer but lacking vomerine teeth and webs between the toes. Batrachylodes of the Solomons, like many other species which have lost the vomerine teeth, is a dwarf form. Simomantis of Borneo seems to be a Staurois with webbed fingers. Its omosternum is unforked, and vomerine teeth are absent. It has a typical Polypedates pad on the ventral surface of the digits and also a groove on the dorsal surface
. The biology of the amphibia. Amphibians. 524 THE BIOLOGY OF THE AMPHIBIA There remain in the Cornuferinae three monotypic genera to discuss. All of these are very rare, disced species allied to Cornufer but lacking vomerine teeth and webs between the toes. Batrachylodes of the Solomons, like many other species which have lost the vomerine teeth, is a dwarf form. Simomantis of Borneo seems to be a Staurois with webbed fingers. Its omosternum is unforked, and vomerine teeth are absent. It has a typical Polypedates pad on the ventral surface of the digits and also a groove on the dorsal surface. Palmatorappia of the Solomons seems to be a case of parallel evolution in a different stock, namely in Cornufer or an allied genus. Its omosternum is forked. It may be described as a Cornufer with extensively webbed fingers and Fig. 171.—Polypedates dennysi, a tree frog of southeastern China. Family 2. Polypedatidae.—The diplasiocoelous frogs with cylindrical sacral diapophyses and intercalary cartilages represent very probably a natural family which has evolved from the Ran- idae in much the same way that the Hylidae did from the Bufoni- dae. They are distinguished from ranids only by the presence of the intercalary cartilage. The 13 genera in the family are not regrouped into subfamilies, for they represent too uniform a stock. The Polypedatidae inhabit southern Asia, Japan, the Philippines, the East Indian Islands, Africa, and Madagascar. It has been frequently claimed that the Polypedatidae do not represent a natural group but that ranid stocks in different parts of the world have independently developed an intercalary carti- lage. This is certainly not true in Africa, where Chiromantis, Leptopelis, Hylambates, Hyperolius, Megalixalus, and Kassina. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original wo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookpublishernewyorkmcgr, booksubjectamphibians
