Crossodactylodinae Fouquet, Blotto, Maronna, Verdade, Juncá, de Sá & Trefaut Rodrigues, 2013 is an invalid junior synonym of Paratelmatobiinae Ohler & Dubois, 2012 (Amphibia, Anura).

Among the results of their survey of the phylogenetic relationships among over 2800 species of recent amphibians, Pyron & Wiens (2011) identified a new clade of frogs including the genera Paratelmatobius Lutz & Carvalho, 1958 and Scythrophrys Lynch, 1971. Both these genera were previously placed in the family Leptodactylidae Werner 1896 (1838), whether conceived as a large (e.g., Frost et al. 2006) or a more restricted family (e.g., Grant et al. 2006). Pyron & Wiens (2011) erected a subfamily “Paratelmatobiinae” for these two genera. Unfortunately, as they provided no diagnostic character for this new taxon, their nomen is a nomen nudum. Ohler & Dubois (2012) pointed this out and provided a diagnosis, thus making the nomen Paratelmatobiinae available. More recently, Fouquet et al. (2013) stated that the genera Crossodactylodes Cochran, 1938 (placed in the Cycloramphidae Bonaparte, 1850 by Frost et al. 2006) and Rupirana Heyer, 1999 (unallocated to family by Frost et al. 2006) were members of the same clade as Paratelmatobius and Scythrophrys, and they introduced the new nomen Crossodactylodinae for this taxon. This nomen is just an invalid junior subjective synonym of Paratelmatobiinae Ohler & Dubois, 2012, and it should not be used for a taxon consisting in these four genera. An additional comment is in order here regarding the justification given by Fouquet et al. (2013) for changing the nomen of this taxon. They were aware of Pyron & Wien’s nomen Paratelmatobiinae, which they repeatedly mentioned in their paper. They had realised that it is a nomen nudum but not that it had been made available by Ohler & Dubois (2012). The simplest and most straightforward approach would then have been to simply provide a diagnosis aiming at making the nomen available, which they did, but they also replaced it by the new nomen Crossodactylodinae. Their reason for doing so was stated as being “the anteriority of Crossodactylodes over Paratelmatobius” (p. 452). However, although this argument had already been used (see e.g. Darst & Cannatella 2004: 468), this anteriority is irrelevant to fix the valid familial or subfamilial nomen, as priority works independently in the different nominal-series (see e.g. Dubois 2006: 17). In fact, if the nomen Paratelmatobiinae had not already been made available, the best choice would have bee to coin a subfamilial nomen based on the generic nomen Rupirana, as this would have resulted in a much shorter, euphonious and palatable nomen than those based on the other three genera of the taxon (see Dubois & Raffaëlli 2009, Dubois 2010). But, as soon as a nomen is already available for a taxon, it is not appropriate to create a junior synonym for it, as it increases the synonymy load of taxonomy (Dubois 2008).