Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela

View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.

Comments
This species was featured in News of the Week 3 March 2025:

When trying to distinguish one species from another we often think about differences in adult traits. However, in animals with complex life cycles, like amphibians, sometimes early life stages are equally or more helpful in discovering the evolutionary relationships among species. Dias et al. 2024a> identified and named a new genus of toad - Adhaerobufo - using tadpoles (larval frogs) that were in museum collections and had been collected in past expeditions from the Eastern Pantepui uplands and highlands of Guyana. The tadpole specimens were originally identified as part of a completely different genus of toad, Atelopus, because they were suctorial and had additional adaptations for fast-flowing streams. Molecular analyses revealed they were part of the Rhaebo group of true toads, despite the fact that they looked wildly different from all tadpoles known from that clade. This unexpected result caused a re-examination of the taxonomy within the Rhaebo group and the naming of the new genus. Adults of the genus Adhaerobufo look incredibly similar to close relatives but the tadpoles are extremely distinct, making these tadpoles the key to unraveling the taxonomy of this clade. (Written by Molly Womack)

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2025 Adhaerobufo ceratophrys: Horned Toad <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/139> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Apr 30, 2025.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2025. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 30 Apr 2025.

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