Endangered
Taruga fastigo
Taruga fastigo
Taruga fastigo is a frog in the family Rhacophoridae (order Anura), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Adult males measure 35–40 mm (1.4–1.6 in) and females 55–64 mm (2.2–2.5 in) in snout–vent length. There are prominent white tubercles around the vent and lower surfaces of the thighs. Dorsal colouration is brown or olive green, and the dorsum bears an incomplete, dark-brown hourglass-shaped marking.
A late-stage tadpole (Gosner stage 44) measures 40 mm (1.6 in) in total length, with body length of 17 mm (0.67 in).
Range and habitat
It is endemic to Sri Lanka and only known from its type locality, Morningside Estate near Rakwana.
It is present in the Morningside Forest Reserve, although pressure from land use is also present in the reserve.
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
The only known population inhabits montane tropical moist forest at about 1,060 m (3,480 ft) above sea level. Taruga fastigo is a rare species that is threatened by habitat loss and degradation.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Taruga fastigo 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 Taruga fastigo, Wikidata item Q28007370. 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.
