About Teratohyla midas (Lynch & Duellman, 1973)
Teratohyla midas (Lynch & Duellman, 1973) is an arboreal species of glass frog, meaning it primarily lives in trees. Through its semi-opaque skin, the green bones are visible; in female specimens, the humerus spine can also be seen. When viewed from above, the snout is truncated, creating an angled shape around the lateral nostril area. Adult males have a snout-vent length of 17.4 mm to 19.2 mm, while adult females measure 20.6 mm to 25.6 mm in snout-vent length. The finger discs of T. midas are rounded and truncated, and all discs are roughly the same size. Narrow lateral fringes are not present on the fingers. Both the hands and feet have moderate webbing: webbing completely covers all toes, but only covers the third and fourth fingers. The base body color of T. midas is a darker lavender. It has bright yellow flecks on its dorsal side; these flecks are unique to each individual, similar to human fingerprints, and researchers use them to tell different specimens apart. When the frog is preserved in preservative, these yellow flecks turn white. Both the hands and feet are dull greenish yellow. The heart is not visible through the skin, and the internal organs are unpigmented. The iris is silvery brown with black reticulation. T. midas can be distinguished from other glass frog species by its unique internal visceral structures: its liver is covered by a transparent membrane called the heptadic peritoneum. In its normal resting state, T. midas holds all four legs pressed close to the sides of its body. T. midas is mostly found in lowland areas of northern South America, in regions with highly diverse vegetation that includes both humid and dry forests. It typically occurs at elevations between 190 and 1050 meters above sea level. The most recently recorded specimen was found around 1200 kilometers southeast of Crique Grand Leblond in French Guiana, which is the easternmost known record of the species. Because T. midas has such a wide geographic range, researchers suspect it may actually be a species complex rather than a single species. Tadpoles of T. midas develop in streams. The species is experiencing local habitat loss, but large areas of suitable habitat still remain. While other glass frogs (family Centrolenidae) are kept as pets worldwide, there is no specific data available on T. midas being held in captivity.
