Despite having been described in 1906, little is known about the natural history of the largest frog in the world, Conraua goliath. In their recent paper, Schäfer et al. (2019) shed light on the species' reproductive behavior by documenting their construction of nest sites. The authors described three types of nesting sites they found in West Cameroon that protect developing offspring from river torrents and predators: rock pools, existing washouts, and dug-out depressions in gravel riverbanks. The different types of nest sites have differing levels of construction effort and risk of flooding or drying. However, in each of these sites, the breeding adults cleared the area of detritus and leaf-litter and deposited eggs on multiple occasions. Camera traps showed that adults guarded nests at night, which is consistent with local knowledge. The authors speculate that because large, heavy objects must be moved for nest construction, this type of nest construction may have favored large size in this species.
