Hyloxalus pulcherrimus

Hyloxalus pulcherrimus is a frog.  It lives in Peru.

Body

The adult male frog can be as big as 28.2 mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog can be as big as 29.7  mm long. There are disks on the toes of all four feet for climbing. The skin of the frog's back and head is gray-green in color with some copper-brown marks. The sides of the body are black with some blue-white marks. There are stripes on the sides of the body. They are light brown near the head and blue-white near the rear end. The throat and belly are cream-white in color. The bottoms of the legs and feet are white with brown marks. The top of the mouth is pink-brown in color with some white. The male frog's male organs are white in color.

Home

This frog is awake during the day. Scientists saw this frog in exactly one place, 2620 meters above sea level in the Cordillera Occidental. They saw the frog in streams that were near or on farms.

Scientists think this frog might live in Cutervo National Park but they have not seen it there.

Young
Scientists believe the female frog lays her eggs on the ground and that, after the eggs hatch, the adult frogs carry the tadpoles to water. They believe this because this is what other frogs in Hyloxalus do. They have not seen Hyloxalus pulcherrimus lay eggs or carry tadpoles.

Danger
Scientists believe this frog is in some danger of dying out because people keep changing the places where it lives: people start fires to make the land ready for farms. Farmers take water away from streams for their farms, so there are fewer places for the tadpoles to grow. Pollution can also hurt this frog. Because scientists saw the frogs next to roads, they think this frog is good at living in places that human beings have changed.

Scientists also think the fungal disease chytridiomycosis could have killed many of these frogs. They think climate change could also hurt this frog because it could change the streams of water where the frog lives.

First paper

References

Category:Frogs of South America