Telmatobius culeus

The frog

Telmatobius culeus is a frog in the family Telmatobiidae (order Anura).

Range and habitat

Titicaca water frogs live exclusively in lakes and rivers in the Lake Titicaca basin. Adults of the typical form generally live deeper than 10 m (33 ft) in Lake Titicaca itself, but the maximum limit is unknown. While exploring this lake in a mini submarine, Jacques Cousteau filmed individuals and their prints in the bottom silt at 120 m (400 ft), that is the record depth for any species of frog.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

Adults also regularly eat fish (primarily Orestias, up to at least 10 cm long) and cannibalism where large frogs eat small individuals has been recorded. In captivity, the tadpoles will feed on a range of tiny animals, such as copepods, water fleas, small worms and aquatic insect larvae.

The Titicaca water frog breeds year-round in shallow coastal water where the female lays about 80 to 500 eggs. The "nest" site is typically guarded by the male until the eggs hatch into tadpoles, that happens after about one to two weeks.

In crisis

The Titicaca water frog has declined drastically, leading the IUCN to rank it as endangered. It was once common, with a survey in the late 1960s by Jacques Cousteau and colleagues counting 200 individuals in an only 1 acre (0.4 ha) plot of the huge lake. Although not directly comparable, a survey in 2017 of three 100 m × 2 m (328 ft × 7 ft) transects at 38 locations only detected a total of 45 Titicaca water frogs at 6 of the locations (none at the remaining).

The causes of the precarious status of the Titicaca water frog are over-collecting for human consumption, pollution and introduced trout, and it may also be threatened by disease. In 2013, it was one of the contenders for "ugliest animal", a humorous public vote arranged by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, an organisation that attempts to draw attention to threatened species that lack the cuteness factor.

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.

Telmatobius culeus 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 culeus, Wikidata item Q1628083. 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.