Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Ecuador

View distribution map in BerkeleyMapper.

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This species was featured as News of the Week on May 25, 2020:

Harlequin toads (genus Atelopus) have been hit particularly hard by the deadly amphibian chytrid fungal disease. This is especially true in Ecuador, where all 25 species of Atelopus found in the country are considered threatened or worse, and half have not been seen since the early 1990's. However, Barrio Amorós and colleagues (2020) report a 2019 rediscovery of Atelopus mindoensis in Ecuador providing a glimmer of hope for these imperiled amphibians. They describe finding five juveniles and two adults on a private reserve near Mindo. Two juveniles were analyzed for the presence of chytrid fungus and no signs of disease were detected. This exciting news adds to other examples of persisting Atelopus populations since 2008 in the face of ongoing disease threats and gives hope for the future of these magnificent frogs. Other rediscoveries include A. cruciger in Venezuela (Rodríguez-Contreras et al. 2008), A. varius in Costa Rica (González-Maya et al. 2013) and Panama (Perez et al. 2014), and A. longirostris in Ecuador (Tapia et al. 2017) (Written by Allie Byrne).

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2021 Atelopus mindoensis: Mindo Stubfoot Toad <https://amphibiaweb.org/species/61> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Dec 22, 2024.

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

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