Golden mantella

Appearance

The golden mantella is a uniformly yellow, orange, or red frog measuring 20–26 mm. Brightly colored skin warns predators that the frog is poisonous. It is thought that the brilliant colors exhibited by the golden mantella are an example of aposematism, warning predators of the poisonous nature of the frog.

Range and habitat

The golden mantella is a small, terrestrial frog endemic to Madagascar. It has an extremely restricted distribution in three distinct areas centered on the town of Moramanga - Beparasy and Ambohibary Communes, Torotorofotsy Wetland northwest of Andasibe, and in the area of Ambakoana.

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

Diet and breeding

When the rains arrive and the temperature warms, frogs emerge from hiding and use small lentic wetlands for breeding. The golden mantella has a diet of small invertebrates.

The frogs derive their skin toxins from their diet.

In crisis

Golden mantella is one of Madagascar's most threatened amphibian species due to its limited distribution in an area under tremendous anthropogenic pressure. It may also be threatened by over-collection for the pet trade.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

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

Golden mantella 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 Golden mantella, Wikidata item Q775326. 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.