Frogs of Australia
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Key guide to Victorian frogs
The Frogs of Victoria project is retained only for the great key guide. Work through a series of questions until, finally, your frog is identified.
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Pseudophryne dendyi
Dendy's Toadlet
Also: Southern Toadlet
+ 54 kb Dendy's Toadlet (Pseudophryne dendyi)
A small and colorful frog whose range covers eastern Victoria and extends into south-eastern New South Wales. Like other members of the genus Pseudophryne, this frog is a ground dwelling species with a preference for walking.
Distribution and habitat
Adults are most often found among damp leaf litter or sheltering under other debris in moist depressions and can be found in both wet and dry forests and alpine areas. Eggs are terrestrial, spawned in shallow burrows (or nests), and the tadpoles, which hatch when the area is flooded, inhabit ponds, flooded ditches and hollows.
There is a detailed distribution map available for: Victoria.
Calling
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Males call from the shallow nest or burrow in low lying areas usually near water. The call is a very short harsh grating note - "cre-ek" - repeated every few seconds.
Copyright Murray Littlejohn. Recorded by Murray Littlejohn. Must not be reproduced without permission.
Life cycle
Distinguishing characteristics
+ 63 kb Dendy's Toadlet (Pseudophryne dendyi)
Adult
length: 22-32mm.
Some 70 to 170 pigmented eggs are spawned in a burrow or nest and they are loosely clumped and often coated in soil or mud. Tadpoles are dark brown, the clear fins with fine dark flecks. Adults are brown to almost black above, their belly coarsely marbled with black and white and they have bright yellow patches in armpits and rear of body.
Visible features
Presented here is the information stored in the frogs.org.au database which is used to identify frogs based on their appearance. It is intended to be used in a key guide for separating species so some of the information (for example, back colours) may be rather non-specific. The system is currently being developed - if you notice errors in the data, please write to Dave Black at the address at the bottom of the page.
Important note: This information details only the appearance of the frog. If an "or" appears in the description, this may mean either that there is some variation within the species or that the feature might be observed differently by different people. For example, if a frog has very small toe pads, it may be listed as having "Toe pads: present or absent".
Size
Up to between 30mm and 60mm
Eyes, hands, and feet
Pupils: horizontal
Toe pads: absent
Webbing on feet: no webbing
Belly
Texture: smooth
Pattern: marbled
Colour: multi-coloured with only black, grey, and white
Back
Texture: smooth or warty
Pattern: plain
Colour: multi-coloured
Glands and tubercles
Parotoid gland: absent
Tibial gland: absent
Metatarsal tubercles: absent
Similar species (note: this version was written for Victorian species).
Distinguished from most other frogs by its coarse black and white marbling on its undersurface, Dendy's Toadlet can be distinguished from Pseudophryne semimarmorata by the absence of orange or yellow on its underside, and from Pseudophryne bibroni by the absence of a pair of boomerang-shaped ridges over the shoulder.
The scientific names of Pseudophryne dendyi
- Limnodynastes nigrolutea (Howitt, Lucas & Dendy 1891)
- Pseudophryne dendyi (Lucas 1892)
