List of amphibians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
A list of amphibians organizes the class of amphibian by family and subfamilies and mentions the number of species in each of them.
The list below largely follows Darrel Frost's Amphibian Species of the World (ASW), Version 5.5 (31 January 2011). Another classification, which largely follows Frost, but deviates from it in part is the one of AmphibiaWeb, which is run by the California Academy of Sciences and several of universities. The major differences between these two classifications are:
- Frost's ASW has split several families from other families (i.e. elevated to distinct families), whereas AmphibiaWeb has not (i.e., keeping them within the original families as subfamilies):
- From Dendrobatidae: Aromobatidae
- From Myobatrachidae: Limnodynastidae
- From Ranidae: Ceratobatrachidae, Dicroglossidae, Mantellidae, Micrixalidae, Nyctibatrachidae, Petropedetidae, Phrynobatrachidae, Ptychadenidae, Pyxicephalidae, Ranixalidae, Rhacophoridae
- AmphibiaWeb has also split a few families off from other families (i.e. elevated to distinct families), where Frost's ASW has not (i.e., keeping them within the original families):
- From Alytidae: Discoglossidae
- From Leiopelmatidae: Ascaphidae
- From Ambystomatidae: Dicamptodontidae
- From Caeciliidae: Scolecomorphidae, Typhlonectidae
- From Ichthyophiidae: Uraeotyphlidae