Endangered
Hewitt's ghost frog
Heleophryne hewitti
Hewitt's ghost frog is a frog in the family Heleophrynidae (order Anura) — Heleophryne hewitti, recorded as Endangered and tied to South Africa.
The frog
Hewitt's ghost frog is a frog in the family Heleophrynidae (order Anura) — Heleophryne hewitti.
Range and habitat
It is endemic to Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Its natural habitat is fynbos heathland and grassy fynbos. Adults are difficult to see but live in or near fast-flowing perennial rivers and streams where they also breed.
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
Only small remnants of fynbos survive within its range, and it is threatened by habitat loss caused by afforestation, fires, erosion, siltation of streams, dams, and roads. Introduced predatory fish are probably also a threat.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Hewitt's ghost 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 Hewitt's ghost frog, Wikidata item Q307179. 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.
