17th of July 2026: Tchabal Mbabo Puddle Frog
TGIFF: thank goodness it’s Frog Friday. Here’s a bit of information on the Tchabal Mbabo Puddle Frog (Phrynobatrachus mbabo), a frog first formally described in 2020 and who doesn’t seem to have appeared in the scientific literature since. They’re about 1.4-1.8 cm long.
They were originally collected in the 1970s as an unspecified Phrynobatrachus species, and it was a formal assessment of various past collected individuals, using both morphological and genetic measures, that they were found to be a separate species. They are named after the location where they’re exclusively found, that being the Tchabal Mbabo mountain range in Cameroon. When looking at their genetic distance, they separated from other Phrynobatrachus in the Pleistocene, which would be when the area surrounding their habitat become more arid, so it makes sense that their population would have been isolated to this region at that point.
Their advertisement call sounds “wooden” or slightly metallic, and consists of a relatively fast “tick-tick-tick”. They’ve been found to be active after nightfall between 20:00 and 21:30 in the montane forest, though calls have also been recorded during the daytime.
A survey in 2016 of the area did not find them, so our last record of them is from 2000. The IUCN has not evaluated them, however in the paper the authors point out that based on their small habitat area (<10 km²) and presumed population decline, they are likely critically endangered.
Source: [Info and Image]
