Description
Atelopus seminiferus is an elongated frog with rather short limbs. The snout to vent length for the holotype is 40.0 mm. This toad’s snout nearly reaches the middle of its forearms when forearms are extended. When viewed from above, the snout is rounded, truncate, and from the side is somewhat prominent. The diameter of its eye is equal to the length of the snout, and has a thickened, but not prominent, eyelid. Its toes are heavily webbed while fingers are only slightly webbed. The skin is smooth everywhere but on the sides, which has many condensed mini tubercles from head to groin, and a broad fold of skin that extends from its side to the middle of the femur (Cope 1874).

Atelopus seminiferus has a shorter snout and limbs than A. spumarius (Cope 1874).

In life, the dorsal surface of A. seminiferus is dark-brown and the ventral surfaces is brownish-orange. The sides from head to groin as well as the limbs are black, and each tubercle of the skin is yellow (Cope 1874).

Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Peru

View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.

Atelopus seminiferus lives in montane habitats of primary forests on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains from Balsa Puerto to Moyabamba, Peru at 1,000-2,000m asl. A terrestrial species (Cope 1874; Schulte at al. 2004).

Life History, Abundance, Activity, and Special Behaviors
Atelopus seminiferus is a terrestrial (Schulte at al. 2004), stream-breeding species. However it is not present in habitats that have been modified (Cope 1874).

Trends and Threats
Atelopus seminiferus is present in a protected area, however it has a decreasing population trend, and is likely to be threatened by chytridiomycosis. While no positive confirmation of this species being affected by the pathogen yet, due to the threat of chytridiomycosis disease management is recommended in the form of a captive-breeding programme (Schulte at al. 2004).

Possible reasons for amphibian decline

General habitat alteration and loss
Habitat modification from deforestation, or logging related activities
Intensified agriculture or grazing
Habitat fragmentation
Disease

Comments
The species authourity is: Cope, E. D. (1874). "On Some Batrachia and Nematognathi Brought from the Upper Amazon by Prof. Orton." Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 26(2):120-37.

Based on Maximum Likeliehood and Baysian Inference analyses of 570 base pairs of 16S rRNA, A. seminiferus was found to be most closely related to A. cf. spumarius and those in turn where sister to the clade consisting of A. hoogmoedi and A. flavescens (Lötters et al. 2010).

References

Cope, E. D. (1874). ''On Some Batrachia and Nematognathi Brought from the Upper Amazon by Prof. Orton.'' Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 26(2), 120-137.

Lötters, S., van der Meijden, A., Rödder, D., Köster, K.E., Kraus, T., La Marca, E., Haddad, C.F.B, Veith, M. (2010). ''Reinforcing and expanding the predictions of the disturbance vicariance hypothesis in Amazonian harlequin frogs: a molecular phylogenetic and climate envelope modelling approach.'' Biodivers Conserv, 19, 2125–2146.

Schulte, R., Salas, A., Angulo, A., Lötters, S. (2004). Atelopus seminiferus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2004: e.T54548A11165473.http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK .2004.RLTS.T54548A11165473.en. Downloaded on 14 October 2016.

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2016 Atelopus seminiferus <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/78> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Jan 31, 2025.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2025. <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 31 Jan 2025.

AmphibiaWeb's policy on data use.