>>I haven't seen this paper; what journal is it in?

>>

>>The North American hylids are, I think, very similar to the lampropeltiins in their taxonomic issues; the generalized groups which closely resemble their extralimital relatives are the ancestors of the specialized New World taxa, and so paraphyletic taxonomy is common.>>



Immunological data shows that there was an adaptive radiation early in the history of the N. American hylids. The immunological data supported an unresolved polytomy between Hyla arborea and the N. American hylids. Hyla is of course paraphyletic since Pseudacris is nested within Hyla.



>>Of course none of this is relevant to the OP's question. I think I'll start a general taxonomy/nomenclature discussion thread in the scientific research forum.>>



The OP mentioned Hyla cinerea and how the area in which he lived may be subject to cold weather. That got me thinking about the definition of Pseudacris as "cold weather breeding" frogs, and how that definition is absurd since some of the species of Pseudacris have similar distributions as Hyla cinerea.



The absurdity does not end there because Moriarty and Cannatella subdivided Pseudacris into several "clades" which they named "fat frogs", "trilling frogs" and "crucifer clade." Hence there is nothing sacred about the definition of "cold weather breeding." In fact, just about any criterion can be used to artificially delimit so-called "clades" using probably faulty mtDNA data. Although the OP's question was not taxonomic in nature, but it is nevertheless somewhat useful to bring up the absurdities that are behind some of the current taxonomic proposals because we see so many of these absurdities in the past few years.

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