Natterjack toad

Description

The size of males ranges from four to seven cm, females from five to eight cm. The back is marbled brown or olive on a lighter background. The skin surface is dry and warty. The large tubercles, as well as the parotids on the back of the head, are sometimes reddish in color. A thin longitudinal yellow line usually (but not always) runs across their "cross" (the back). The body is stocky, the head sloping sharply forward, the snout rounded, the pupil horizontally elliptical, the iris lemon yellow to greenish. The hind legs are also particularly short by toad standards, so natterjack toads rarely hop, but characteristically move forward in a mouse-like crawl.

Habitat

Like the European green toad, the natterjack toad is a pioneer species of warm, open habitats in areas with loose and sandy soils. The presence of vegetation-poor to -free biotopes with sufficient hiding places as terrestrial habitat as well as barely vegetated shallow and small waters as spawning sites is a prerequisite for the existence of the natterjack toad.

On the one hand, the preference for very shallow micro-waters for the deposition of the spawning cords involves the danger of drying out before the larvae have completed their metamorphosis. On the other hand, such habitats offer the advantage that they warm up very quickly and there are no predators in the water. The loud call of the natterjack toads is adapted to mating in annually changing waters - the female partner must be attracted not only to the male toad, but also to the corresponding unknown water body. Natterjack toads are found in excavation areas, inland dunes, post-mining landscapes, fallow land, construction sites, military training areas, coastal dunes, salt marshes and ruderal areas in human settlements. The species is sometimes found even in poorly structured agricultural landscapes, provided that suitable spawning habitats are available. The habitats mentioned are secondary biotopes. The natterjack toad is originally a species of floodplain landscapes, which have become very rare today due to straightening and damming of river courses and the construction of dams, where it finds optimal breeding conditions on open, dry-warm, mostly sandy sites.

The text is a translation of an excerpt from Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreuzkröte). On wikipedia the text is available under a „Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike“ licence. Status: 29 June 2021