The 15th meeting of the African Amphibian Working Group celebrated thecontributions of John Charles Poynton to African Herpetology. The meeting, inTrento, Italy, was timed to commemorate John’s 81st birthday (in May 2012), and hepresented a keynote speech that focused on a topic that has long fascinated him  theAfrotemperate amphibian fauna. His presentation is published here, in a modifiedform, for this special issue of African Journal of Herpetology (Poynton 2013). Otherpapers on the main themes of John’s research are also included in this issue, whichinclude biogeography (Loader et al. 2013; Schreiner et al. 2013), taxonomy (Cruzet al. 2013) and morphology (Wilkinson et al. 2013)