Endangered
Puerto Rican rock frog
Eleutherodactylus cooki
Puerto Rican rock frog is a frog in the family Eleutherodactylidae (order Anura) — Eleutherodactylus cooki, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Breeding males and some females may have yellow throats and abdomens, and it is the only Eleutherodactylus species that exhibits sexual dimorphism in color and size.
Females are slightly larger than males, reaching a mean size of 2.01 in (51 mm) in length, whereas the males reach about 1.7 in.
The species was first described by American herpetologist, Chapman Grant in 1932.
Range and habitat
This species is restricted to the Cuchilla de Panduras mountain range (Maunabo, San Lorenzo, and Yabucoa), and in the municipalities of Patillas, Humacao, and Las Piedras in Puerto Rico. It occurs at low and intermediate elevations from 18 to 1,183 ft (361 m) above sea level, where they inhabit caves formed by large boulders of granite rock ("granodiorite", Geologic Map of the Yabucoa Quadrangle, USGS, 1977) known as guajonales or streams with patches of rocks without cave systems. It is believed to be limited in distribution by the rock formations where it occurs.
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 Puerto Rican rock frog, also known as the Puerto Rican cave-dwelling frog or rock coquí, and locally as coquí guajón, or guajón for brevity, is a threatened frog species from the coqui genus. The frog is threatened due to deforestation, agricultural, rural, and industrial development, and the associated infrastructure. The hidden and complex habitats where the Puerto Rican rock frog occurs makes it difficult to study, so little detailed information is available about its population's status and distribution or the health of known populations.
Populations of species with a small range, or restricted to a specific habitat, are most susceptible to loss or depletions because of localized human activities that change their habitats. This species usually lives in naturally fragmented, and the majority of the known populations are on private land, where increased levels of land development are occurring.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Puerto Rican rock 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 Puerto Rican rock frog, Wikidata item Q2711757. 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.
