Drewes' moss frog
Arthroleptella drewesiiSummary 1
The Drewes' Moss Frog (Arthroleptella drewesii) is a species of frog in the Petropedetidae family. It is endemic to Fernkloof Nature Reserve in South Africa. Its natural habitats are Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation and rivers. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Description 2
Morphological Description:Arthroleptella drewesii is a small ranid frog from South Africa with an average adult length of 15 millimeters from snout to vent. Compared to the three other species of the genus that reside in the mountains of the south-western Cape, it is morphologically indistinguishable down to the skeleton. Presently, the only way of distinguishing one species from another are by comparing DNA and male advertisement calls. The snout is bluntly rounded with small, round nostrils. The vocal pouch has well defined lateral folds. A broken glandular ridge exists from the upper lip at the jaw angle to the arm insertion. The eyelids are warty, and a row of black warts runs backward from the eyes to the sacral region. A variable amount of warts are found towards the vent. The legs are short, the toes have a trace of webbing at the base, and the fingertips are rounded and slightly expanded (Channing, A., D. Hendricks & A. Dawood (1994) ).
Color: The dorsal surfaces are a uniform dark brown with paler legs. Warts are black against the brown background. The arms and legs are darkly marked with brown blotches on a pale background. A black mask extends from the nostrils through the canthal area to the arm insertion. The vocal pouch is black. The ventral surfaces are darkly marked against a pale background, as are the soles of the hands and feet (Channing, A., D. Hendricks & A. Dawood (1994) ).
Sources and Credits
- (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthroleptella_drewesii
- (c) AmphibiaWeb © 2000-2015 The Regents of the University of California, some rights reserved (CC BY), http://eol.org/data_objects/34266199
