Anotheca spinosa

Full body

The size of the male is about 68 mm, the female typically measures about 80 mm. This frog has an unmistakable head with pointed spines and a large eardrum. Young people lack the projections. Males do not have vocal clefts. The color is dark brown above with a black veining and flanks bordered by white. The larvae are white when hatched, and later turn dark brown in the upper part and bluish gray in the lower part as they mature.

He lives in cloud forests and is active all year round and hard to find. It is an arboreal species, found in bromeliads and banana plants. The calls of the males come from cavities filled with water, such as tree holes, open bamboo holes or armpits of bromeliad leaves. The call is a strong "boop-boop-boop" and can be heard up to 100 m away.

Its distribution by country includes Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico and Panama. Southeast Mexico (disjunct populations on the Atlantic slopes of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, State of Oaxaca and State of Veracruz, 800-2,068 m asl); East of Honduras (95 m asl); Costa Rica and western Panama (350-1,330 masl).
They have found tadpoles in bromeliads in felled trees, in cavities of trees full of water and in internodes of bamboo in a botanical garden forest. Larvae can breathe atmospheric oxygen after hatching.

Rarely the species is seen, but it is often heard in an appropriate habitat in Costa Rica. In Mexico it is reported as rare, where it seems to have been extirpated from some places. Only two specimens are known in Honduras; It has protected status in two Honduran reserves, the El Ocote Biosphere Reserve, the La Amistad International Park and the Tawahka Asagni Biosphere Reserve. The state in Panama is unknown. A captive breeding program is being carried out at the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in Panama.

The main threats to this species seem to be the loss and degradation of habitat, derived from small-scale agriculture and the collection of subsistence wood. In any case, the possible reasons for the reduction of amphibians are already well known: alteration and general loss of habitat, modification of deforestation habitat, or activities related to logging, intensified agriculture or grazing.

http://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?where-genus=Anotheca&where;-species=spinosa