Critically Endangered
Venezuelan Yellow Frog
Atelopus carbonerensis
Venezuelan Yellow Frog is a toad in the family Bufonidae (order Anura) — Atelopus carbonerensis, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Adult males measure 40–46 mm (1.6–1.8 in) and adult females 44–55 mm (1.7–2.2 in) in snout–vent length. Dorsal coloration is yellow with brown spots around the nostrils and, occasionally, on other parts of the body. There are dorsolateral rows of tubercles and a few scattered tubercles dorsally.
Range and habitat
It is endemic to the Mérida Andes of Venezuela.
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
Following an observation in 1998, it was feared extinct for nearly two decades until a single individual was sighted in 2014, followed by an observation of a mating pair in 2021. Venezuelan Yellow Frog is known from cloud forest at elevations of 2,000–2,800 m (6,600–9,200 ft) above sea level. Individuals have been found along streams, in that the tadpoles develop.
Following an observation in 1998, this species was feared extinct for over two decades with targeted searches not producing any new sightings. The decline is probably caused by chytridiomycosis in combination with other factors, particularly habitat loss – little of the original cloud forest at the type locality remains.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Venezuelan Yellow 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 Venezuelan Yellow Frog, Wikidata item Q2236704. 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.
