Bleeding toad

Appearance

Bleeding toads are medium-sized toads that have dark red/purple bodies with blood-red to yellow marbling present on the back and legs. Males measure 20–30 mm (0.79–1.18 in) and females 25–40 mm (0.98–1.57 in) in snout–vent length.

Range and habitat

Bleeding toads are endemic to western Java and are known from a small number of sites in the Mount Gede Pangrango National Park and from around Mount Halimun Salak National Park. The bleeding toad, fire toad or Indonesian tree toad is a true toad in the amphibian family Bufonidae, endemic to Java, Indonesia.

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 bleeding toad is listed as a critically endangered species due to a drastic population decline. The factors behind this decline are unclear, but appear consistent (despite ambiguous observations) with the global spread of chytrid fungus, a particularly lethal fungal spore for frogs and toads. Once infected, the animals develop a condition known as chytridiomycosis before ultimately dying. Bleeding toads are listed as critically endangered by the IUCN: once locally abundant, it has declined dramatically and the remaining population is estimated to be no more than 250 adults.

It was initially believed that the eruption of Mount Galunggung in 1987 was responsible for a significant portion of this decline due to the loss and degradation of habitat, but at present the decline looks more consistent with chytridiomycosis, as the observed patterns of decline resemble declines of other mountainous stream-breeding amphibians that have been affected by the fungus, but no positive identification of the disease on a bleeding toad has been made. In addition, tourist activities are threatening at least one subpopulation.

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

Bleeding toad 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 Bleeding toad, Wikidata item Q598095. 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.