''Gastrotheca ovifera'' (vernacular names: pouched frog and giant marsupial frog; es, rana marsupial comun or ) is a species of

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

in the family

Hemiphractidae The Hemiphractidae are a family (biology), family of frogs from South America, South and Central America. Previously, this group had been classified as a subfamily (Hemiphractinae) under family Hylidae. More recent research classifies these gen ...

. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to northern

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

and is known from the

Venezuelan Coastal Range The Venezuelan Coastal Range ( es, Cordillera de la Costa or ), also known as Venezuelan Caribbean Mountain System ( es, Sistema Montañoso Caribe) is a mountain range system and one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela, that runs along the c ...

, including

Sierra de Aroa Sierra (Spanish for "mountain range" and "saw", from Latin '' serra'') may refer to the following: Places Mountains and mountain ranges * Sierra de Juárez, a mountain range in Baja California, Mexico * Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain range i ...

. ''Gastrotheca ovifera'' occurs in

cloud forest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...

s at elevations of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

. It is associated with

bromeliad The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa, ...

s where it hides, especially during dry periods. The eggs are carried on the female's back and have direct development (i.e., there is no free-living larval stage). This species can be locally abundant, but it has declined in many places where it used to be common. It is threatened by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

caused by agriculture, logging, and infrastructure development. However, it has also declined in protected areas such as the

Henri Pittier National Park Henri Pittier National Park is the oldest national park in Venezuela, originally created in 1937 under the name of ''Rancho Grande'' by decree of President Eleazar López Contreras. In 1953 the park was renamed in honor of Henri Pittier, a distin ...

, for reasons that are unclear.

References

ovifera Endemic fauna of Venezuela Amphibians of Venezuela Amphibians described in 1854 Taxa named by Hinrich Lichtenstein Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Hemiphractidae-stub