Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Brazil

View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.

Only known from its type locality in the Serra Bonita mountain range (Camacan and Pau Brasil municipalities), State of Bahia, Brazil. The site is a evergreen to moist lowland forest remnant ranging in elevation from 200 to 950 m (Napoli et al 2011).

Comments

This species was featured in News of the Week 18 November 2024:

What is the smallest vertebrate (animals with a backbone) in the world? Turns out, it’s a frog. Bolaños et al. (2024) compared measurements of many miniature frog species and found that even though there are lots of very small frogs, the Brazilian Flea Toad, Brachycephalus pulex, are the amphibians with the smallest total length recorded, thus taking the title of the tiniest anuran amphibian. And it was a close call, as the flea-toad beat out Paedophryne amauensis by less than a mm! The tiniest vertebrate invokes questions about their biology, and Carrasco-Medina et al. (2023) investigated whether such small body sizes might affect the cardiorespiratory system, specifically the lungs and heart. They compared closely related frog species (mostly Brachycephalus) and found the species with the smallest body sizes had reduced features in both the heart and lungs and very thin skin. As a result, the authors suggest that these extremely small species likely rely more on their skin than their lungs to bring in oxygen. (Written by Molly Womack)

References

Bornschein, M. R., Pie, M. R., Teixeira, L. (2019). "Conservation status of Brachycephalus toadlets (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest.” Diversity, 11(150), 1-29. doi: 10.3390/d11090150 [link]

Napoli MF, Caramaschi U, Goncalves Cruz CA, Diaz IR. (2011). "A new species of flea-toad, genus Brachycephalus Fitzinger (Amphibia: Anura: Brachycephalideae), from the Atlantic rainforest of southern Bahia, Brazil." Zootaxa, 2739, 33-40.

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2024 Brachycephalus pulex: Brazilian Flea Toad <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/7691> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Nov 22, 2024.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2024. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 22 Nov 2024.

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