Golden Toad

• Its disappearance was sudden: in 1987 more than fifteen hundred adults were counted gathered to breed, in 1988 eleven turned up and in 1989 just one. None has ever been seen since.
• It is the symbol of the global amphibian crisis and one of the first extinctions the scientific community attributed to the combination of climate change and the chytrid fungus, which devastated montane amphibian populations around the world.
• It lived in a strip of cloud forest of barely ten square kilometres and spent almost the whole year underground, emerging only a few days a year to breed in temporary pools.
• Its entire range measured about four square kilometres. It was endemic to a single cloud forest.
• Sexual dimorphism was extreme: males were an almost unreal bright orange, while females were dark and mottled with red spots edged in yellow.
• It was described in 1966 in a paper literally titled "An Extraordinary New Toad from Costa Rica".
• In 1987 the population crashed abruptly. In 1989 a single male was found, and none has been seen since. It was declared extinct in 2004.
• It did not fall alone: of the fifty anuran species in a 30 km² area at Monteverde, twenty disappeared after the synchronous crashes of 1987, in an area free of direct human pressure.
• The causes are still debated. The drought associated with the 1987-1988 El Niño, climate change and chytridiomycosis have all been proposed; a 2013 analysis of preserved specimens tested negative for the chytrid fungus.
• It is the symbol of the global amphibian decline crisis.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (amphibian)

Habitat and environment

Cloud forest of Monteverde, in the Cordillera de Tilarán, Costa Rica, above 1,500 metres

Gestation / incubation

Larval development in temporary pools

Litter / clutch size

300 eggs

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Incilius periglenes