Pelodryas Gunther 1859

Pelodryas Günther, 1859: 119 (Fig. 27) Type species: Rana caerulea White, 1790, by monotypy. Content: Five species— Pelodryas caerulea * (White, 1790), Pelodryas cavernicola * (Tyler and Davies 1979b), Pelodryas gilleni * (Spencer, 1896), Pelodryas mira * (Oliver et al. 2021b) comb. nov., Pelodryas splendida * (Tyler, Davies & Martin, 1977). Diagnosis: Pelodryas can be diagnosed from the sister taxon Chlorohyla by medium to very large vs. small to medium body size, medium vs. long TL/SVL, overall tadpole morphology Type 1 vs. Type 4, and non-modulated vs. frequency modulated calls. Refer to Tables 1 and 2. Distribution and ecology: Arboreal and saxicoline frogs that breed in still or slowly flowing waters in streams, permanent and ephemeral waterbodies in arid and semi-arid woodlands and grasslands, forests, and tropical savannah in central, eastern, and northern Australia, southern and northern mainland New Guinea. Etymology: Günther (1859) did not provide an etymology for the name, but it is presumably from the Greek πέλΩΡος (peloros, huge or immense) and ΔΡύας (dryas, a nymph or spirit of the woods), alluding to the large size of these tree frogs. Dryas is feminine. Duellman et al. (2016) incorrectly gave the derivation as from the Greek pelo meaning clay or mud and dryos meaning tree, and unsurprisingly were unable to identify the allusion. Remarks: Pelodryas is the equivalent of the Litoria caerulea Group of Tyler and Davies (1978).