The Costa Rica brook frog or red-eyed stream frog (''Duellmanohyla uranochroa'') is a species of

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

in the family

Hylidae Hylidae is a wide-ranging family of frogs commonly referred to as " tree frogs and their allies". However, the hylids include a diversity of frog species, many of which do not live in trees, but are terrestrial or semiaquatic. Taxonomy and ...

found in

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

and

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

s are tropical moist lowland

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

s, subtropical or tropical moist

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 ...

s, and

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

s between 70 and 1740 meters above sea level.

Appearance

The skin of dorsum is leaf-green in color. The ventrum and neck are bright yellow. The ventral parts of the legs are dull yellow. A yellow-white stripe reaches from the lip down each side of the body to the groin. The iris is bright red with horizontal pupils. The female frog is larger than the male frog, with larger tympanums.

Behavior

This frog is

nocturnal Nocturnality is a ethology, behavior in some non-human animals characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnality, diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatur ...

. It has been seen at night near mountain streams. During the day, they have been seen hiding in

bromeliad The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a Family (biology), family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the Tropics, tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and on ...

plants. The frogs breed in May and June. The male frog's call sounds like "boop boop boop boop", but individual frogs and frogs in different geographic locations can sound slightly different. The female frog lays eggs in pools of water with

silt Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension (chemistry), suspension with water. Silt usually ...

y bottoms.

Threats

As of 2013, This species is classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. Declines and local extinctions have been reported for populations (referred to as ''Hyla uranochroa'') within the Monteverde region of Costa Rica's Cordillera de Tilaran, synchronous with the decline of 24 (from a total of 53) other amphibian species during 1990.Pounds, J. A., Fogden, M. P. L., and Campbell, J. H. (1999). ''Biological response to climate change on a tropical mountain.'' Nature, 398(6728), 611-615.

References

Duellmanohyla Endangered fauna of North America Amphibians of Costa Rica Amphibians of Panama Amphibians described in 1875 Taxa named by Edward Drinker Cope Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Hylinae-stub