Оңтүстік Американың суда жүзетін бақаларының туысы

Genus of amphibians

Pseudis is a genus of South American frogs (swimming frogs) in the family Hylidae.

Pseudis species are distributed throughout tropical and subtropical South America, almost entirely east of the Andes (P. paradoxa is the only species with populations west of the Andes, in Colombia). They are found from Trinidad to northern Argentina, being absent only in Ecuador and Chile, highland regions, and the southernmost part of South America. All species occur in Brazil, and P. bolbodactyla, P. cardosoi, P. fusca and P. tocantins are endemic to this country.

These frogs have several adaptations to aquatic life, such as protuberant eyes, robust hind limbs, and fully webbed feet. They are the longest known tadpoles and also large compared to the adult frogs, which are in snout–to–vent length. Their adult frogs also average somewhat smaller with snout–to–vent lengths of However, there are two outliers in the genus: The closely related P. cardosoi and P. minuta (equalling the proposed genus Podonectes, see Phylogenetic relationships) have more normal tadpoles that are not known to surpass lengths of This is still large compared to the adults of these two species, meaning that they too "shrink" during metamorphosis from tadpole to frog. Pseudis is closely related to a second genus, Lysapsus, that lacks giant tadpoles and in which adults are smaller, up to The adult frogs feed mostly on land based insects and spiders, but also other land based or aquatic invertebrates, small frogs and—in some species—plant material.

There are seven species in this genus (given that Lysapsus is accepted as a separate genus). Until the late 1990s and early 2000s, most authorities only recognized P. minuta and P. paradoxa, but P. cardosoi was described in 2010 (having formerly been included as a population of P. minuta), while the remaining were considered subspecies, synonyms or populations of P. paradoxa. Hylidae, and as their own family Pseudidae This results from their highly derived body plan for a hylid frog due to their mostly aquatic habits. Recent morphological and molecular phylogenetic reconstructions have unambiguously placed them within the subfamily Hylinae with Scarthyla as a sister group. Phylogenetic relationships among species of the group were recently proposed using molecular evidences. Both publications found identical trees, but proposed different taxonomic solutions for the nonmonophyly of Pseudis, either resurrecting the genus Podonectes or placing Lysapsus as a junior synonym of Pseudis. More recent molecular evidence did not find Pseudis paraphyletic with respect to Lysapsus, so the synonymy is unnecessary.