Endangered
Mistbelt Moss Frog
Anhydrophryne ngongoniensis
Mistbelt Moss Frog is a frog in the family Pyxicephalidae (order Anura) — Anhydrophryne ngongoniensis, recorded as Endangered and tied to South Africa.
Appearance
It is small (1.6–1.8 cm) sandy/golden brown frog with four broken stripes of darker brown down the back extending onto the limbs. A very distinct fifth line runs from the tip of the snout through the eyes and ear to just behind the tympanum. Mistbelt Moss Frog, the Ngongoni moss frog, Natal bandit frog, or mistbelt chirping frog (and many combinations of the previous), is a frog in the family Pyxicephalidae.
It was originally described in the genus Arthroleptella.
Range and habitat
This tiny frog is restricted to an extremely small range, on grassy slopes in indigenous grasses of hills facing the ocean. The eastern escarpment of the Drakensberg Mountains is on the windward side and receives cool moist air so that it could be said to be in a permanent mist belt. It is endemic to South Africa.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
As the name of the genus implies it breeds and lays eggs without the need for standing water.
In crisis
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Mistbelt Moss 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 Mistbelt Moss Frog, Wikidata item Q28034721. 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.
