Hyloxalus elachyhistus

The Loja rocket frog (Hyloxalus elachyhistus) is a frog.  It lives in  Ecuador and Peru.

Body
The adult male frog is about 24.1 mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog is as big as 24.8 mm long.  It has disks on the toes of all four feet for climbing. This frog has a light yellow or light brown stripe on the sides of its body. The stripe has brown or black color around it. The chest is yellow with some gray marks. The belly can be white or yellow with gray marks. The iris of the eye is gray-brown in color.

Home
This frog is awake during the day. It lives in forests that do not have much water in the air. It lives on mountains and in lower places.  People have seen the frog in streams, pools of water, and on farms. People have seen this frog between 540 and 2760 meters above sea level.

Many of the places the frog lives are protected parks, for example Reserva Ecológica de Chaparri, and Área de Conservación Regional Bosques Secos Salitral-Huarmaca, Reserva Ecológica Buenaventura, and Reserva Laipuna.

Young
The male frogs sit near stones that are part in the water and part above the water, or they sit next to a stream, and they call to the female frogs. After the eggs hatch, the adult frogs carry the tadpoles to water.  Scientists have seen one female frog carrying tadpoles on her back. All the other adult frogs they saw carrying tadpoles were male frogs. Scientists saw the tadpoles swimming from January to July. 

The tadpoles are 3.3–7.4 mm long not counting the tail and 9.8–17.4 mm long with the tail when the adults carry them to water. They can grow to be as big as 10.8 mm without the tail and 32.5 with the tail.

Danger

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature says this frog is not in danger of dying out from planet Earth, but the government of Peru says it is "endangered" in Peru and the government of Ecuador says it is "vulnerable" in Ecuador. Many of the frogs died years ago. Scientists think this could be because of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis but they are not sure. Mostly, human beings change the places where the frog lives to get wood to build with, make places for cows to eat grass, and make farms. Bad chemicals and fish from other parts of the world could kill this frog.

References

Category:Frogs of South America