Changes to Amphibian Taxonomy

I hope Jeroen doesn't mind my posting this here, but this came through on Herpnet

Matt


    Dear all,

    You might be interested to learn about a new paper by Frost et al.(2006) (apologies to those who have already been informed about it). I am sure you all know Darrel Frost, by his Amphibian Species of the World
database webpage)

http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia/index.php

The paper stirs up things quite heavily and some of these have consequences for European amphibians.
I have adopted all these changes in EUROHERP, as they appear to be rightful and an improvement. Among others, old and (much too) big genera like Rana, Bufo and Hyla have been split up. Let me run briefly through the most
important changes (you may check "EUROHERP Browse" for more details):

    above the genus level:
    - change of authorship of the taxa Amphibia, Anura and Caudata (!note erronous double date for Anura in the paper!)
    - "priority" of Caudata over Urodela
    - priority of Alytidae over Discoglossidae (as already proposed by Dubois, 2004)
    - confirmation of Bombinatoridae

    at genus level:
    - Rana catesbeiana => Lithobates catesbeiana
    - Rana (Pelophylax) spp. (= water or green frogs) => Pelophylax sp.incl. changed ending for Pelophylax epeiroticus, P. shqipericus, P. kl.esculentus and P. ridibundus
    - Bufo calamita => Epidalea calamita; Bufo viridis => Pseudepidalea viridis
    - confirmation of Triturus vulgaris, T. helveticus, T. boscai, T.montandoni, T. italicus => Lissotriton sp. and T. alpestris => Mesotriton alpestris
    - Triturus vittatus => Ommatotriton vittatus (not implemented but should be! same for Calotriton asper (and arnoldi))

    You can find the original document here =>
    http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspac e/handle/2246/5781
   ... or through EUROHERP ...
    http://intramar.ugent.be/nemys/start .asp?group=16&c=41&doc=16109

    With kindest regards,

    Jeroen, EUROHERP admin