Critically Endangered
Lake Oku clawed frog
Xenopus longipes
The Lake Oku clawed frog is a frog in the family Pipidae, endemic to Lake Oku, a small crater lake in northwest Cameroon.
Appearance
Its back is brown, the belly is speckled black on an orange background. It is a small, dark-coloured, fully aquatic frog with a length of 28 to 36 mm (1.1 to 1.4 in), males being slightly smaller than females.
Lake Oku clawed frogs are small, with males growing to an average of 28–31 mm and females 32–36 mm.
Range and habitat
The Lake Oku clawed frog lives exclusively in Lake Oku, a small crater lake in northwest Cameroon. The Lake Oku clawed frog is a frog in the family Pipidae, endemic to Lake Oku, a small crater lake in northwest Cameroon. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated this frog as "critically endangered" on the basis of its small area of occurrence at a single location, and the possibility that introduction of non-native fish into the lake could cause the frog to be wiped out.
The lake in that it lives and the surrounding forest are an official government protected area (a "Plantlife Sanctuary").
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 Lake Oku clawed frog was assessed to be critically endangered during the IUCN's 2004 Global Amphibian Assessment, and again in 2017. This is because of its small range-size (one single crater lake) and the likelihood that fish could be introduced to the lake. The population of X. Longipes has been studied by researchers in collaboration with the local community since 2006, among them studying the lake's ecology.
Captive populations have been established at several zoos, among them ZSL-London Zoo (UK) (since 2008) and the Steinhart Aquarium of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco (USA) (since 2013). The general aim has been to research how to set up a captive assurance colony in event of extinction in the wild.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Lake Oku clawed frog 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 Lake Oku clawed frog, Wikidata item Q2705408. 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.
