SPECIES: Pseudophryne corroboree — Southern Corroboree Frog
CLASSIFICATION: Critically endangered
Bright, bold, and barely the size of a 20-cent coin, the Southern Corroboree Frog is one of Australia's most distinctive and endangered amphibians. With striking black and fluorescent yellow stripes, this tiny frog is only found in a small patch of alpine and subalpine sphagnum bogs in Kosciuszko National Park, NSW. It’s one of the few frog species that produces its own toxins – which it uses for defence – making it completely unique among Australian frogs. Adapted to the cold, it lays eggs in mossy nests above water in late summer. When snowmelt fills the pools in spring, the tadpoles hatch and complete their development in icy water.
With fewer than 50 frogs left in the wild, the species now survives mainly through captive breeding programs. And why, you ask? The chytrid fungus has decimated wild populations, climate change is reducing snow cover and drying out breeding habitat and habitat fragmentation has further limited its already small range.