Batrachia

Batrachia
Temporal range:
Early TriassicPresent, 250–0 Ma
Australian green tree frog (Litoria caerulea)
Fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Subclass: Lissamphibia
Superorder: Batrachia
Latreille, 1800
Orders

Caudata
Salientia

The Batrachia /bəˈtrkiə/ are a clade of amphibians that includes frogs and salamanders, but not caecilians nor the extinct allocaudates.[1] The name Batrachia was first used by French zoologist Pierre André Latreille in 1800 to refer to frogs, but has more recently been defined in a phylogenetic sense as a node-based taxon that includes the last common ancestor of frogs and salamanders and all of its descendants. The idea that frogs and salamanders are more closely related to each other than either is to caecilians is strongly supported by morphological and molecular evidence; they are, for instance, the only vertebrates able to raise and lower their eyes.[2] However, an alternative hypothesis exists in which salamanders and caecilians are each other's closest relatives as part of a clade called the Procera, with frogs positioned as the sister taxon of this group.[3]

  1. ^ Ryoko Matsumoto; Susan E. Evans (2018). "The first record of albanerpetontid amphibians (Amphibia: Albanerpetontidae) from East Asia". PLoS ONE. 13 (1): e0189767. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0189767. PMC 5752013. PMID 29298317.
  2. ^ Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles
  3. ^ Marjanović, D.; Laurin, M. (2013). "The origin(s) of extant amphibians: A review with emphasis on the "lepospondyl hypothesis"". Geodiversitas. 35: 207. doi:10.5252/g2013n1a8. S2CID 67823991.