Endangered
Cretan frog
Pelophylax cretensis
Cretan frog is a frog in the family Ranidae (order Anura) — Pelophylax cretensis, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The Cretan frog is generally light grey to brown and mottled with brown or olive-grey spots on its back, while the throat and underside of the body are whitish-grey. Occasionally, the upperparts of the Cretan frog may be grass-green with distinct brown spots. The insides of the hind legs are yellow, and the sides of the body may also have yellowish colouration.
It is a medium-sized frog reaching up to 8 cm in length and with a weight of 40 g.
Range and habitat
It is endemic to the Greek island of Crete, where it is patchily distributed over a wide area. It inhabits altitudes of up to 920 meters (with one unconfirmed record at 1,330 meters above sea level). All of its distribution range lies within the Crete Mediterranean forests ecoregion.
It is endemic to the Greek island of Crete.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It is a generally diurnal, shy frog that usually basks out of water and will jump into the water when it feels threatened. Nocturnal behaviors have also been reported, with individuals in some areas being predominantly active after sunset.
It is typically solitary in nature and communicates via a sequence of distinct calls. Cretan frogs predominantly consume invertebrates, with a food preference leaning towards aquatic insects, snails, and small crustaceans. During breeding season, males develop prominent vocal sacs on their throats and they aggressively defend their territories, employing a variety of strategical calling and physical confrontation.
In crisis
The Cretan frog is listed as an Endangered species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and its population is declining. Even so, this population has dangerously decreased since the introduction of the American Bullfrog to the lake. The American Bullfrog is four times bigger than the Cretan frog and a lot more aggressive, as a result it is outcompeting the local population of frogs.
The Cretan frog in other areas usually lives in also under severe threat, being of poor quality, extremely fragmented and decreasing in size, mainly due to new developments for the tourism industry as well as other infrastructure development. Although this species inhabits a number of protected areas, some of these are not currently well managed or protected correctly for conserving species and as a result greater actions should be taken in order for the Cretan frog's population to recover.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Cretan frog 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 Cretan frog, Wikidata item Q1788045. 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.
