Endangered
Telmatobius brachydactylus
Telmatobius brachydactylus
Telmatobius brachydactylus is a frog in the family Telmatobiidae (order Anura), recorded as Endangered and tied to Peru.
The frog
Telmatobius brachydactylus is a frog in the family Telmatobiidae (order Anura).
Range and habitat
This highly aquatic frog is endemic to tributaries of Lake Junín (not in the lake itself) in central Peru and to other nearby waterways, where it is found at altitudes of 4,000–6,000 m (13,000–20,000 ft).
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
Both the IUCN and organizations within Peru classify this frog as endangered. Principal threats include habitat loss in favor of human resource collection and agriculture, pollution, climate change, and predation by introduced species, such as trout. Frogs that live in canals are threatened by the cleaning processes, that include plant removal, that keep the canals navigable.
Scientists note that this frog is captured for human consumption and consider overexploitation a possible threat, but this has yet to be confirmed. Scientists also consider the fungal disease chytridiomycosis a possible threat, but they have yet to detect the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis on this species.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Telmatobius brachydactylus 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 Telmatobius brachydactylus, Wikidata item Q28017557. 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.
