Tamá harlequin frog

The toad

Tamá harlequin frog is a toad in the family Bufonidae (order Anura) — Atelopus tamaense.

Range and habitat

It is endemic to the Páramo de Tamá on the Venezuelan-Colombian border and is found in Apure and (likely) Táchira states of Venezuela, and Norte de Santander Department on the Cordillera Oriental of Colombia. Its natural habitats are sphagnum bogs within the páramo ecosystems and upper montane forests at elevations of 2,950–3,200 m (9,680–10,500 ft) above sea level. Habitat degradation due to fire is a major threat, even so, the primary threat to this specie is chytridiomycosis, that has negatively impacted many other montane Atelopus species.

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

Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.

Tamá harlequin 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 Tamá harlequin frog, Wikidata item Q2237085. 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.