Yellow comb toad

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Yellow comb toad
Systematics
Row : Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
without rank: Amphibians (Lissamphibia)
Order : Frog (anura)
Family : Tongueless (Pipidae)
Genre : Honeycomb toads ( pipa )
Type : Yellow comb toad
Scientific name
Pipa arrabali
( Izecksohn , 1976)

The Yellow Surinam toad ( Pipa arrabali ) is a South American Froschlurch from the family of tongueless .

features

The yellow comb toad is an average of 4 and can be up to 6 centimeters long. The head of this species is quite wide, its width from corner to corner of the mouth is four times the length of the head. The snout is bluntly rounded and protruding over the gap in the mouth, the nostrils are widely spaced. The corners of the mouth are slightly covered by folds on both sides, but there are no appendages on the muzzle. The eyes are small and about 3.5 times the interorbital distance. On the premaxillary and maxillary there are teeth that are greatly reduced in size and number. The fingertips carry the species-specific appendages of all comb toads and have a tactile function. They are also known as the “star-shaped organ” and the comb toads as the “star finger toads”. In the yellow comb toad, the fingertips branch out into four lobes of equal size. The hind legs are long and are about 110% of the length of the head. the toes are equipped with curved webs reaching to the tips. The three inner toes are keratinous and darker in color than the rest.

The color of the living animal is gray to slightly brownish on the upper side with numerous dark spots, and white on the underside.

Occurrence

This species is distributed from Guyana , Suriname , western Venezuela to northern and central Brazil and has so far only been found in smaller, more or less persistent, stagnant waters (ponds). When one pond dries up, the animals move to another. You can also move quickly on land by hopping.

Way of life

The yellow comb toad is nocturnal in the wild. During the day, the animals can be observed while drawing air on the surface of the water, but they immediately hide again at the bottom of the water, where they remain until the next breath. The honeycomb toads come to the surface of the water about every five minutes to draw air. If they are disturbed, they can also stay under water for up to 20 minutes.

The animals search for food exclusively at night. You swim slowly over the bottom and scan the surroundings with your front legs stretched out. In the wild, the yellow honeycomb mainly eats tadpoles that are found while swimming around. The tadpoles are sucked up from the ground or from the open water using suction snaps combined with a simultaneous gripping movement. When searching for food, the animals also penetrate foam nests of Leptodactylus species ( L. knudseni , L. pentadactylus ), where they can stay for several days.

P. arrabali does not seem to be dependent on visual stimulation by moving prey, as is necessary in other pipids to trigger the feeding reaction (e.g. in dwarf- clawed frogs ) . It is oriented more towards the sense of smell and touch, or the well-developed lateral line organ.

Reproduction

Male yellow comb toads call in the wild, especially in the rainy season (from October to June) and only at night. The call is like a metallic click and is emitted underwater. The males sit with their upper bodies erect at the bottom of the pond, sometimes hidden under leaves.

The yellow comb toad gives birth to between 6 and 16 fully developed young toads, depending on the size of the mother. Mating has not yet been observed, but it has to proceed in a similar way to that of the great comb toad : males and females perform a kind of “mating dance” with loops under water, with the aim that the sinking eggs land on the back of the female and stick there. Over time, the female's skin overgrows the eggs and soon disappears entirely in the back. The “honeycombs” of the yellow comb toad are limited to the back of the back, where the swollen skin soon bulges like a backpack.

Newly hatched young toads have a head body length between 10 and 14 mm.

literature

  • Izecksohn, 1976: Uma nova especie de Pipa, do estado do Amazonas, Brasil (Amphibia, Anura, Pipidae) . Revista bras Biol, 36-2 pp. 507-510 (Portuguese)
  • Christian Buchacher, 1993: Field studies on the small Surinam toad, Pipa arrabali, near Manaus, Brazil . Amphibia-Reptilia 14: 59-69 (English)
  • Kriton Kunz, 2003: Clawed frogs, dwarf clawed frogs, comb toads. Pipidae in nature and human hands . Nature and Animal Publishing House. P. 70. ISBN 3931587754

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