Critically Endangered
Panamanian golden frog
Atelopus zeteki
The Panamanian golden frog, also known as the Panamanian golden toad, Zetek's golden frog, and Cerro Campana stubfoot toad and other names, is a toad endemic to Panama.
Appearance
The skin colour ranges from light yellow-green to bright gold, with some individuals exhibiting black spots on their backs and legs.
Females are generally larger than males. Females typically range from 45 to 63 mm (1.8 to 2.5 in) in length and 4 to 15 g (0.14 to 0.53 oz) in weight, with males between 35 and 48 millimetres (1.4 and 1.9 in) in length and 3 and 12 grams (0.11 and 0.42 oz) in weight.
It was first described as a subspecies of Atelopus varius, but is now classified as a separate species.
Range and habitat
The Panamanian golden frog is endemic to Panama, living close to mountain streams on the eastern side of the Tabasará mountain range in the Coclé and Panamá provinces. Its geographic range previously extended as far east as the town of El Copé in western Coclé Province before the onset of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, that caused the El Copé population to rapidly collapse in 2004. Vital habitat is lost each year to small farms, commercialized agriculture, woodlot operations, livestock range, industrial expansion, and real estate development.
Individuals have been collected for breeding in captivity in a bid to preserve the species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The male tends to stay near the streams where breeding occurs, while in the nonbreeding season, the female retreats into the forests.
In crisis
While the IUCN lists it as Critically Endangered, it may in fact have been extinct in the wild since 2007. The remaining few specimens were taken into captivity and the location of filming was kept secret to protect them from potential poachers. Although captive populations seem to thrive well, reintroducing them to an area will not stop the threat of chytridiomycosis.
Since then, they have been able to successfully breed 500 individuals in captivity but will not release them into the wild until the fungal disease is less of a threat. Populations of amphibians, among them the Panamanian golden frog, suffered major declines possibly due to the fungal infection chytridiomycosis.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. 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.
Panamanian golden 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 Panamanian golden frog, Wikidata item Q2048914. 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.
