Endangered
Karpathos frog
Pelophylax cerigensis
Karpathos frog is a frog in the family Ranidae (order Anura) — Pelophylax cerigensis, recorded as Endangered.
Range and habitat
The Karpathos Frog was formerly considered to be restricted to Karpathos in Greece, but recent research based on analyses of complete mitogenomes found the species to also occur on Rhodes Island. On Karpathos it has a very restricted distribution (currently found in four localities within an area of less than 10 km2, near Olympos village), whilst on Rhodes it appears to be more widespread. It can be found from sea level up to 500 m above sea level.
It is endemic to the islands of Karpathos and Rhodes, South Aegean Sea, Greece. The Karpathos frog was considered to be the most endangered anuran amphibian in Europe, and was until recently classified as Critically endangered, because it was thought its range was restricted to two small rivers in the north part of Karpathos island.
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
It is threatened by habitat loss. Regarding the Karpathos population, although the sites from that the species is known are fairly remote, even small, low-scale habitat changes could be detrimental to the species due to very small number of individuals. Freshwater habitats are subject to a number of threats such as excessive water abstraction, that is occurring for agricultural purposes, among them livestock watering.
Water availability is or at least was the main threat. Fires are an additional potential threat, both from locals who use fire to manage their lands and wildfires, that may increase with drier conditions.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Karpathos 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 Karpathos frog, Wikidata item Q1734325. 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.
