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Home > Species > Amphibians > Togo Slippery Frog

Togo Slippery Frog

Conraua derooi

About

Reaching moderate sizes of 75-85 mm, it is not immediately obvious that the Togo slippery frog is a close relative of the world’s largest frog, the Goliath frog.

This species is known from the Togo-Volta Highlands along the Ghana-Togo border, and is likely endemic to the region. A recently-discovered population in Central Ghana is now thought to represent a completely different species which is new to science.

The genus (Conraua)to which the Togo slippery frog belongs, along with the world’s largest frog, diverged from all other amphibians over 80 million years ago. This means frogs from this genus are more distantly related to other frogs than bats are to the giant panda!

Most of the forest habitat within the small range of this species has been lost as a result of agricultural expansion, logging, and human settlements. Stream sedimentation may be having an adverse effect on breeding. There are some small protected areas within the range of the species, including Kiabobo National Park in Ghana, but it has not been confirmed from any of these.

  • Order: Anura
  • Family: Conrauidae
  • Trend: decreasing
  • Size: 74-84mm

EDGE Score

EDGE Score: 6.37 (?)
ED Score: 34.44 (?)
GE / IUCN Red List (?)
Not Evaluated Data Deficient Least Concern Near Threatened Vulnerable Endangered Critically Endangered Extinct in the Wild Extinct

Distribution

The species is likely to be endemic to the Togo-Volta Highlands of eastern Ghana and western Togo.

Habitat and Ecology

This species is forest dependent, living near fast-flowing water. The tadpoles develop in streams. The males have been found to lack mating calls.

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Conservation Actions

For each key category of conservation action, we calculated a conservation attention score based on expert information. In this graph, a higher score means the action is being carried out more intensively over more of the species range. The colour shows how important each action is considered to be for the conservation of this species.

Engaging stakeholders
89
Addressing threats
89
Status of knowledge
33
Management plan
0
Capacity building
0
Behaviour change
0
Awareness raising
67
Funding
0
Legislation
0
0
20
40
60
80
100
  Score: 100 means the activity occurs at high level across more than 75% of the species range
 
Priority:
High
Medium
Low
Very Low

Overall Conservation Attention

We combined all of the expert information on conservation actions to calculate an overall conservation attention score for this species. Please help us to reach our goal of establishing dedicated conservation attention at “High” levels for all EDGE species.

Very Low Low Medium High
34%

More information

Recent studies have grouped all possible conservation activities for any species into nine key categories (Washington et. al 2015). For each action, we asked experts for each species to assess the extent to which that action is being carried out and how much of the species’ range that action occurs in. For each action we used these two pieces of information to calculate the conservation attention score per action. A score of 100 means that the action is being carried out to a high level across at least 75% of the species range. We then combined the scores for all actions into an overall conservation attention score for the species. The experts also judged how important each category was to the conservation of that particular species.

This wordcloud illustrates the threats facing this species. The size of each word indicates the extent of a species range that is affected by that threat (larger size means a greater area is affected). The colour of the word indicates how much that threat impacts the species (darker shades of red mean the threat is more severe).

Urban Development Avalanches Extreme weather Crops Wood plantations Mining Hunting Gathering Logging Fishing Fire Dams Invasive species Wastewater Industry Agriculture Garbage

Threat wordcloud key:

Small area affected
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
Large area affected
Least severe
Most severe
Severity unknown
Source: The IUCN List of Threatened Species. Version 2017.1.
Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org

Michael Akrasi

  • Project name: Recovery and conservation of the last populations of the Togo slippery frog
  • Project site: Amedzofe, Ho West District, Volta Region
  • Active: 2020 - 2022
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Caleb Ofori Boateng

  • Project name: Population size and population genetics of the Critically Endangered Togo slippery frog.
  • Project site: Volta Region, Ghana
  • Active: 2012 - 2014
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