Critically Endangered
Atelopus certus
Atelopus certus
Atelopus certus, the Darien stubfoot toad or Toad Mountain harlequin frog, is a toad in the family Bufonidae endemic to Panama.
The toad
Atelopus certus is a toad in the family Bufonidae (order Anura).
Range and habitat
The toad is endemic to the Darien region of eastern Panama, and its type locality is Cerro Sapo (literally "toad mountain"), giving it its common names Refrigerator and xylophone. Its natural habitats are tropical montane and submontane forests. It breeds in forest streams where the tadpoles also develop.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Calling males and egg sites define most frog field work. A species known from one ridge is as narrow as it sounds.
Eggs and damp skin make amphibians quick to vanish from a drained wetland or a forest stripped of litter.
In crisis
The species is threatened primarily by the advancing wave of chytridiomycosis moving through Central America, and secondarily by habitat loss, although much of its range falls within the Darién National Park, a protected area and world heritage site. Because so many other Atelopus species are in steep declines, this amphibian is seen as a priority species for ex situ conservation. In June 2010, a team of conservation partners working under the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project mounted an expedition to the Darien and brought back a founding population of these frogs to begin an ex situ conservation program at Summit Municipal Park near Panama City.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Atelopus certus is Critically 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 Atelopus certus, Wikidata item Q2628463. 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.
