Agalychnis merge

[flybyferns]

Hello fellow frog forumeers!
Flybyferns recently showed this interesting article about hybridization between A. moreletii and A. annae. It's overall a nice read and I suggest anyone interesting in more than just keeping the frogs to give it a go. However, I stumbled upon something I was totally unaware of, and that I would like to get some clarification on. As far as I knew, the Agalychnis genus currently contained 6 species:
A. salator A. spurelli A. litodryas A. annae A. moreletii A. agalychnis
However, this is from the beginning of the article (which was published on the 11th of February 2011):

And so the confusion begins. That is 14 species, and it's missing A. litodryas. Moreover, I see some species that confuses me greatly, for example A. lemur. I know there's a species called Hylomantis lemur, but not Aagalychnis lemur. So I turned to good ol' Wikipedia, which states the following:

Lets face it, Wikipedia is not wrong that often, but it seems to be something wrong here, since Wiki shares my view of the Agalychnis genus.
While continuing the confusion, and tried finding something about the Hylomantis lemur, so I Wiki:ed that as well, which gives this, clearly stating that it's a frog within Hylomantis. A searched for Agalychnis lemur gives nothing. I also searched for Hylomantis and now it gets even more interesting. All the species listed within the Hylomantis article, can all be found listen as Agalychnis in the article about hybridization. After some more reading in the article, I found this:

According to this, there's no longer a Hylomantis nor a Pachymedusa genus within the world of frogs, since they all were added to Agalychnis. Since Wikipeda seems to be clueless about this, I tried to find something else to back it up with. I then found the amazing "subwiki" Wikispecies. When reading the article about Agalychnis, it looks exactly like the one in the hybrid article. In addition to this, Hylomantis and Pachymedusa both redirects you to the Agalychnis article. While at Wikispecies, I decided to look up A. litodryas as well, but it redirects to A. spurreli (where Wikipedia have two different articles, claiming they are two different species with different attributes and that they look different from each other).


So, where am I going with this? Well, I just want some confirmation from someone that knows what's up, and that can back it up with some sources, articles, research etc. I would love to know why and when this happened, and how it's possible to merge two species into one, when they look so different from each other. Where there just two different morphs, or how is the logic behind it?
I'm thankful for any answers I get regarding either the species-merge or the genus-merge. I just want to educate myself in a field that I'm very interesting in, and I want to be up to date with the research. Feels bad that I've been walking around thinking I know at least a decent amount about the Agalychnis genus, when I clearly don't!
Lastly, thanks for reading!

Hi Martin,
It is a great article. I have an idea, but too tired at the moment to explain it.
Great research ! I started heading down this same path. I never got this far digging in. Plus, my mission at he time was obtaining a clear answer to my long ,clearly ,still unanswered question regrading having to separate the a. moreletii from the a. Callidryas . After reading most of this this, it all make me wonder if there is truly anyone who is expert enough on this topic that could explain the confusion.
Lynn

[butcher]

I have read in previous posts from John that the experts in the field continue to change names of species. I don't know for what reason but they do. Is something worth intrest of looking into though.

[flybyferns]

Good Morning Martin,

Sorry I could not do this last night as I was just too tired.
Unfortunately, my job is a bit stressful to say the least!

My first thought is to check to see if there have been any changes on Amphibian Web:
AmphibiaWeb - Agalychnis callidryas
The best way to tackle this is to look-up each--- all 14 separately. I’m sure you know it will have ,what might be, the latest taxonomy information and much more. This project in-itself will take you in a billion different directions.

Secondly, I would seriously consider emailing Karen Warkentin who is the Principal Investigator- here:
Warkentin Lab Home

I have personally emailed researchers (actually, one at Yale University about my little predicament). These people are very busy but generally quite passionate about a “lay” person asking for information about a species they have dedicated their lives to researching. And YES, I did get an answer.

Thirdly, the Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center website may lead you to either individual or additional information:

Costa Rican Amphibians

And lastly, I thought I would throw this into the Agalychnis ‘stew’ . I had set this aside a few weeks ago but have not had the time to really sift through it in detail. I don't think you saw this. A bit dated (2003), but excellent.

http://www.biolog-e.leeds.ac.uk/Biol...riskerfoot.pdf

Lynn

[ViperJr]

I checked Amphibiaweb, and it too seems to be not thoroughly updated and does not add any more information, I'm afraid. According to Amphibiaweb, Hylomantis lemur is now Agalychnis lemur. When looking at the Agalychnis article, it only contains 6 species including Agalychnis lemur, but not the other Pachymedusa or Hylomantis species. The Agalychnis litodryas is however removed.
When looking at Hylomantis article, it lists all the species that is/was in the genus, and I can't find anything about it being merged with Agalychnis.

I might email the people suggested, if no-one can explain how it really is.