back to comparative morphology Ancient frogs Hyloides branches Hylids part I Bufonids part II Ranoides part I   Melanophryniscus stelzneri Red-bellied toad family: Bufonidae Bufo bocourti Bocourt's toad family: Bufonidae

Bufo speciosus Texas toad family: Bufonidae

Duttaphrynus melanostictus Common Asian toad family: Bufonidae

The red-bellied toad AP was taken from the right ear, the rest were taken from left ears. As they are in all of the figures in all of these pages, rostral is on the viewer's left, caudal is on the right. Along the Hyloides limb of the new amphibian tree of life, eleven branches (with fourteen families) occur beneath the Bufonidae branch. None occurs above it. Although the tear in the tissue obscures it from this angle, it is the very end of the caudal patch that we're viewing in the red-bellied toad micrograph. There is no caudal extension on that AP. There isn't much of one on the AP from Bocourt's toad, and not much of one on the AP of the common toad from my neighborhood, Bufo boreas. These three species pretty much span the New World (B. boreas from western North America, B. bocourti from Mexico and Guatemala, and M. stelzneri from southern South America). In subsequent pages we'll see some bufonid caudal extensions -- but, compared with those of our leptodactylid, our members of the genus Eleutherodacylus, and some of our hylids, they are not impressive. Bocourt's toad was given to the Lewis Lab by David Wake, Professor of Integrative Biology and Curator of Herpetology, University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Wake helped us procure several important species in this study, including Ascaphus truei.