Apennine Yellow-bellied Toad

Appearance

This species was once thought to be a subspecies of the yellow-bellied toad B. Variegata. It has a compact body and a rounded snout and the skin of the back is covered with tubercles. The dorsal surface is dark tan or dark greyish-brown, often with washed-out, bright spots.

Range and habitat

The Apennine yellow-bellied toad is endemic to Italy, where it is found south of the Valley of the River Po, throughout the Apennine Hills and southwards to the tip of the Italian mainland. Its range varies from 20 to 1,700 m (66 to 5,577 ft) above sea level. It is found in ponds and ditches in forests and open areas.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Breeding

The Apennine yellow-bellied toad is a diurnal species, and hibernates from about November to April. Breeding activity starts soon after the toads leave hibernation, and females lay multiple clutches of a few eggs in temporary water bodies.

In crisis

It is threatened by habitat loss.

Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.

Apennine Yellow-bellied Toad is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Apennine Yellow-bellied Toad, Wikidata item Q618192. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.