Hyloxalus breviquartus

The Urrao rocket frog (Hyloxalus breviquartus) is a frog.  It lives in Ecuador and Colombia.

Body

The adult female frog is 15.4–16.8  mm long from nose to rear end.  The skin of the frog's back is gray-brown in color. There is a line down the side of the body starting at the eye. The belly is white in color.

Name
Scientists gave this frog the Latin name breviquartus for brevi for "short" and quartus for "fourth." They named it this because the fourth toe of the front foot is very short.

Home
This frog lives in on the ground in forests. The forests are high in the mountains.  In Ecuador, this frog can only live in forests where between 2000 and 4000 mm of rain or other weather falls every year. People have seen this frog between 600 and 900 meters above sea level in Ecuador and between 1700 and 2265 meters above sea level in Colombia.

Some of the places this frog lives are protected parks: Parque Nacional de Las Orquídeas.

Young
Scientists think this frog has young the same way other frogs in Hyloxalus do: the tadpoles swim in streams.

Danger
Scientists say this frog is not in danger of dying out now. It is in some danger from people cutting down trees to get wood to build with and to make farms, even where the law says not to make farms. Chemicals from those farms can kill this frog too. Fish from other places can hurt this frog. Scientists think the fungal disease chytridiomycosis could also kill this frog in the future, but they do not think this is a problem yet.

References

Category:Frogs of South America