Telmatobius culeus, commonly known as the Titicaca water frog or Lake Titicaca frog,[1] is a medium-large to very large and endangered species of frog in the family Telmatobiidae.[3] It is entirely aquatic and found only in the Lake Titicaca basin, including rivers that flow into it and smaller connected lakes like Arapa, Lagunillas and Saracocha, in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru.[4][5][6] In reference to its excessive amounts of skin, it has jokingly been referred to as the Titicaca scrotum (water) frog.[7]
It is closely related to the more widespread and semiaquaticmarbled water frog (T. marmoratus),[8][9] which also occurs in shallow, coastal parts of Lake Titicaca,[10] but lacks the excessive skin and it is generally smaller (although overlapping in size with some forms of the Titicaca water frog).[5]
^Stuart, S.; M. Hoffmann; J. Chanson; N. Cox; R. Berridge; P. Ramani; B. Young, eds. (2008). Threatened Amphibians of the World. Lynx Edicions. pp. 101, 410–419. ISBN978-84-96553-41-5.
^Lee, D.; A.T. Chang (17 January 2019). M.S. Koo; K. Whittaker (eds.). "Telmatobius culeus". AmphibiaWeb, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
^ abBenavides, E.; J.C. Ortiz; J.W. Sites, JR. (2002). "Species boundaries among the Telmatobius (Anura: Leptodactylidae) of the Lake Titicaca basin: Allozyme and morphological evidence". Herpetologica. 58 (1): 31–55. doi:10.1655/0018-0831(2002)058[0031:SBATTA]2.0.CO;2. S2CID33007774.
^Vellard, J. (1992). "The Amphibia". In C. Dejoux; A. Iltis (eds.). Lake Titicaca: a synthesis of limnological knowledge. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 449–557. ISBN0-7923-1663-0.
^Victoriano, Pedro F.; Muñoz-Mendoza, Carla; Sáez, Paola A.; Salinas, Hugo F.; Muñoz-Ramírez, Carlos; Sallaberry, Michel; Fibla, Pablo; Méndez, Marco A. (2015). "Evolution and conservation on top of the world: Phylogeography of the marbled water frog (Telmatobius marmoratus species complex; Anura, Telmatobiidae) in protected areas of Chile". Journal of Heredity. 106 (S1): 546–559. doi:10.1093/jhered/esv039.
^De la Riva, Ignacio; García-París, Mario; Parra-Olea, Gabriela (2010). "Systematics of Bolivian frogs of the genus Telmatobius (Anura, Ceratophryidae) based on mtDNA sequences". Systematics and Biodiversity. 8 (1): 49–61. doi:10.1080/14772000903526454.