''Cornufer macrosceles'' is a species of frog in the family

Ceratobatrachidae The Ceratobatrachidae are a family of frogs found in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, the Philippines, Palau, Fiji, New Guinea, and the Admiralty, Bismarck, and Solomon Islands. Taxonomy Ceratobatrachidae was formerly treated as a subfamily ...

. It is endemic to the island of

New Britain New Britain ( tpi, Niu Briten) is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi the Dam ...

, Papua New Guinea. It is only known from the

Nakanai Mountains This is a list of caves of the world that have articles or that are properly cited. They are sorted by continent and then country. Caves which are in overseas territories on a different continent than the home country are sorted by the territory' ...

in the central part of the island. Only three specimens are known. Common name Ti wrinkled ground frog has been coined for the species.

Description

The original species description was based on a single specimen (the holotype, collected in 1956), a small adult female in

snout–vent length Snout–vent length (SVL) is a morphometric measurement taken in herpetology from the tip of the snout to the most posterior opening of the cloacal slit (vent)."direct line distance from tip of snout to posterior margin of vent" It is the most c ...

. The holotype is a small female. Two males found in 1999 measure in snout–vent length. The overall appearance is slender. The head is moderately large and wider than the body. The snout is acutely pointed and elongate. The tympanum is visible, not concealed by the low, fleshy supratympanic fold. The fingers are slender and have greatly expanded and swollen terminal disks. The toe tips are moderately expanded. No webbing is present. The dorsal coloration is bright olive-green, with distinct brown patches on the dorsum. The venter is white. Skin is smooth apart from a few dermal tubercles on the head and the dorsum.

Habitat and conservation

''Cornufer macrosceles'' occurs in rainforests at about

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

(the altitude of the type locality is unknown). Specimens have been found perched on moss-covered branches of shrub-layer vegetation, about 1 m above the ground near a small mountain stream. They were well camouflaged in this habitat. Logging is prevalent in New Britain, but whether it is impacting the range of this species is unclear.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28057420 macrosceles Amphibians of Papua New Guinea Endemic amphibian species of Papua New Guinea Taxa named by Richard G. Zweifel Amphibians described in 1975 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot