Cruziohyla calcarifer

The splendid leaf frog (Cruziohyla calcarifer) is a frog that lives in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador.

Appearance

When the frogs are young, just changed from tadpoles, they have bright yellow marks near their mouths and eyes.  They have no marks on their back legs.

The adult male frog is  56.4 to 80.5  mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog is 57.0 to 88.8 mm long.  The frog's skin is green with some white or light blue spots.  The irises of their eyes are pale gray with yellow on the edges.  The sides and back legs are yellow with short black stripes and triangular patterns.  The front legs and much of the front feet are orange.  The throat is yellow.  The belly has dark marks on it.  This is unusual for tree frogs: most of them have light-colored bellies.

Eggs and tadpoles

The female frog lays her eggs on the middles of leaves that hang over bodies of water, for example ponds.  The tadpoles are different from other Cruziohyla tadpoles: Their mouths and colors are different.

Threats

This frog is not endangered but there are fewer of them than there used to be.  This is because human beings cut down the forests where they live for logging, farms, or to graze animals or build cities.  There is also habitat fragmentation, which means the places they live are cut up so that groups of frogs cannot travel to each other.  They are also killed by chemicals people use to kill pests.

References

Category:Frogs of South America