Indirana salelkari

The Netravali leaping frog (Indirana salelkari) is a frog.  It lives in India in the Western Ghat mountains.

Appearance
The adult male frog is 24.7 - 27.7 mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog is 30.0 - 30.9 mm long. The head is longer than it is wide. The skin of the frog's back is brown or pink in color. There is a dark stripe between the eyes. There is a mark in the shape of the letter W on the front of the head.  There are brown stripes on the jaw and another brown strip from the nose to the shoulder.  There are stripes on the legs and sometimes toes. The sides of the legs have brown or black spots on them. Female frogs have fewer spots than male frogs. The skin of the bottoms of the feet is dark brown and white in color.

Home

This frog lives in forests that have been cut down and are growing back. It lives near streams. People have seen this frog near spice farms. It can only live in places where the tree branches cover at least part of the sky. People have seen this frog between 78 and 600 meters above sea level.

Young

The frog's tadpoles do not spend all of their time in the water. The frog's mouth has a horny beak on it.

Danger

Scientists believe this frog is in some danger of dying out because the place where it lives is not very large. People cut down the forests where it lives to build farms and towns. Sometimes people hurt the frog by stopping landslides: the concrete people use to make roads stronger can fill in the cracks in the rocks where frogs would lay their eggs.  Sometimes people go into the forest and cut some wood to use themselves, but this is only a little dangerous to the frog.

Scientists also think climate change could hurt this frog by changing the weather it needs to lay eggs.

At least one of the places the frog lives is a protected park: Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary.

Scientists have seen the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis on other frogs that live in the same place as this frog, but they do not know how much danger the frog is in from the fungus. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis causes the fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

First paper

References

Category:Frogs of Asia