Osgood's Ethiopian toad (''Altiphrynoides osgoodi'' formerly known as ''Spinophrynoides osgoodi'') is a possibly extinct species of

toad Toad (also known as a hoptoad) is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands. In popular culture (folk taxonomy ...

in the family

Bufonidae {{Cat main, Toad This category Category, plural categories, may refer to: General uses *Classification, the general act of allocating things to classes/categories Philosophy * Category of being * ''Categories'' (Aristotle) * Category (Kant) * C ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the mountains of south-central

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. It was named for the American biologist

Wilfred Hudson Osgood Wilfred Hudson Osgood (December 8, 1875 – June 20, 1947) was an American zoologist. Biography Osgood was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the oldest child of a family of watchmakers. The family moved to California in 1888 and he went to study ...

who carried out fieldwork in Ethiopia for the

Field Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educationa ...

in 1926–27. He collected the original specimens of Osgood's Ethiopian toad and three other endemic species of

anuran A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough skin texture due to ...

Distribution

The toad was common in the

Bale Mountains National Park Bale Mountains National Park is a national park in Ethiopia. The park encompasses an area of approximately in the Bale Mountains and Sanetti Plateau of the Ethiopian Highlands. The park's Afromontane habitats have one of the highest incidences o ...

and other montane environments east of the

Great Rift Valley The Great Rift Valley () is a series of contiguous geographic depressions, approximately 6,000 or in total length, the definition varying between sources, that runs from the southern Turkish Hatay Province in Asia, through the Red Sea, to Moz ...

, and was also said to be present in an isolated population in the Gughe Mountains, although the existence of this population was based on a single specimen which may have been misidentified. If the putative population in the Gughe mountains is not included then this toad's total range covered an area of .

Habitat and ecology

Osgood's Ethiopian toad is mainly a species of tropical

montane forest Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is ...

, possibly extending marginally into open

moorland Moorland or moor is a type of Habitat (ecology), habitat found in upland (geology), upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands and the biomes of montane grasslands and shrublands, characterised by low-growing vegetation on So ...

. There is an observation of these toads breeding in a small pool, which was probably temporary, within a grassy glade surrounded by ''

Hypericum ''Hypericum'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family (biology), family Hypericaceae (formerly considered a subfamily of Clusiaceae). The genus has a nearly worldwide distribution, missing only from tropical lowlands, deserts and polar re ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with woody plants (trees and shrubs), or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunli ...

during April. Long strings of eggs were laid from which the

tadpole A tadpole or polliwog (also spelled pollywog) is the Larva, larval stage in the biological life cycle of an amphibian. Most tadpoles are fully Aquatic animal, aquatic, though some species of amphibians have tadpoles that are terrestrial animal, ...

s hatched.

Conservation

The toad is rare; the last specimen was observed 2003, despite extensive survey work in 2009. If it is still extant, it probably numbers no more than 50 individuals. It is threatened by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

by subsistence exploitation of the forests.

Chytrid Chytridiomycota are a division of zoosporic organisms in the kingdom (biology), kingdom Fungi, informally known as chytrids. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek ('), meaning "little pot", describing the structure containing unreleased zo ...

fungus is very prevalent in amphibians in highland Ethiopia although there is no data on its impact on this species.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2212746 osgoodi Amphibians of Ethiopia Endemic fauna of Ethiopia Bale Mountains Fauna of the Ethiopian Highlands Critically endangered fauna of Africa Amphibians described in 1932 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot