About Pelobates syriacus Boettger, 1889
Pelobates syriacus, commonly called the eastern spadefoot, is a plump toad with a large head topped by a flat skull, large protruding eyes, and vertical slit-like pupils. It reaches an adult length of approximately 9 centimetres (3.5 in). Its skin is smooth, with a scattering of small warts. Males have a large gland at the back of their fore legs that becomes enlarged during the breeding season. Its front foot has four toes, while the back foot has five toes with deeply indented webbing between them. The hind legs are short, and at the back of each hind foot sits a yellowish bony protuberance called the inner metatarsal tubercle, or spade — the feature that gives the species its common name. The eastern spadefoot's body colour is quite variable; the back is often pale grey with large, irregular, greenish blotches, and the belly is pale grey. It can be told apart from the western spadefoot (Pelobates cultripes) by the colour of its spade, which is black in the western spadefoot, and from the common spadefoot (Pelobates fuscus) by its non-domed head. The eastern spadefoot is native to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the Russian Federation, Syria, and Turkey. It is quite common in Iran, but uncommon across most of its range. It is thought to be extinct in Jordan, and its conservation status is unclear in Iraq. Research led by the Palestine Museum of Natural History has recorded this species in Wadi Qana, located in the West Bank. This toad lives in light woodland, shrubby bushy areas, semi-desert habitats, badlands, arable fields, and dunes. It prefers loose soil that it can dig into with its spades to create the burrows it lives in, though it is also found in rocky areas and pebbly clay soils. The species' range is limited by mean annual temperature and rainfall: it does not occur in areas with insufficient summer temperature or high rainfall levels. The northern edge of its distribution may also depend on the range of the common spadefoot. Because the eastern spadefoot produces large tadpoles, its distribution is also limited by the presence of sufficiently large, fish-free ponds.
