Endangered
Mountain yellow-legged frog
Rana muscosa
The southern mountain yellow-legged frog, formerly known as the mountain yellow-legged frog, is a true frog endemic to California in the United States.
Appearance
Its color and patterning are variable. It is yellowish, brownish, or olive with black and brown markings. The underside of its hind legs can be different hues of yellow, from a bold sun yellow to a lighter pale yellow. Larger ones may have hints of orange on their hind legs.
Range and habitat
The frog occurs in mountain creeks, lakes and lakeshores, streams, and pools, preferring sunny areas. As such, adults can be found on rocks around shorelines. The tadpoles require a permanent water habitat for at least two years while they develop.
Its NatureServe conservation status is "critically imperiled".
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Hibernation ends in the spring to start the breeding season. This species feeds on aquatic insects and benthic invertebrates.
Their diet varies depending on the habitat type. When living in streams, it tends to eat terrestrial insects such as beetles, ants, bees, wasps, flies, and dragonflies. Its breeding season begins once the highest meltwater flow is over, around March through May in the southern part of its range, and up to July in higher mountains to the north.
In crisis
It is a federally listed endangered species, separated into two distinct population segments (DPS): a northern DPS, listed endangered in 2014, and a southern DPS that was listed endangered in 2002. Populations formerly classified as Mountain yellow-legged frog in the northern Sierra Nevada have since been redescribed as a new species: Rana sierrae, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog. The Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog has also been classified as a federally endangered species since 2014.
The frog is an endangered species under the US Endangered Species Act. It is separated into two distinct population segments (DPS): a northern DPS, listed endangered since 2014, and a southern DPS that was listed endangered in 2002.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Mountain yellow-legged 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 Mountain yellow-legged frog, Wikidata item Q2559586. 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.
