''Scutiger pingwuensis'' is a species of

toad Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands. A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scientif ...

in the family

Megophryidae Megophryidae, commonly known as goose frogs, is a large family of frogs native to the warm southeast of Asia, from the Himalayan foothills eastwards, south to Indonesia and the Greater Sunda Islands in Maritime Southeast Asia, and extending to th ...

known commonly as the Pingwu lazy toad and the Pingwu alpine toad.Frost, D. R
''Scutiger pingwuensis''.
Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference. Version 5.6, 2013. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. 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 ...

Pingwu County Pingwu County () is a county located in the north of Sichuan province, China, bordering Gansu province to the north. It is the northernmost county-level division of the prefecture-level city of Mianyang. It has an area of and a population of 18 ...

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It lives near villages at about 2200 meters in elevation. Its habitat includes streams bordered by dense

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

s. It lays eggs under rocks in the streams. It is a locally common species, but its range is limited, it is known from only five locations, and its population is believed to be declining. It is threatened by habitat degradation and destruction from agriculture and development as human settlement grows in the area.

Phylogenetic analyses In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

of the genus indicate that this toad is

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

to '' Scutiger chintingensis''.Fu, J., et al. (1997)
Phylogeny of genus ''Scutiger'' (Amphibia: Megophryidae): a re-evaluation.
''Asiatic Herpetol. Res'' 7, 32-37.

References

pingwuensis Amphibians of China Endemic fauna of Sichuan Amphibians described in 1978 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Endangered Fauna of China {{Megophryidae-stub