Bufotes oblongus, the Eastern Persian toad, is a true toad of the genus Bufotes, the Palearctic green toads. It was described by Nikolsky in 1896, and the species has carried several other names since, including Bufo oblongus Nikolsky, 1896, Pseudepidalea oblonga (Nikolsky, 1896) and Bufo danatensis Pisanetz, 1978. The species occurs in eastern and central Iran, north to adjacent parts of Turkmenistan.
Identification
No field-identifiable size, colouring or call has yet been published for Bufotes oblongus in a source this guide can open. A reliable description distinguishing the Eastern Persian toad from its many Bufotes relatives awaits a fuller taxonomic treatment, and this guide will not put a figure or a colour to it without one.
Habitat and range
The toad’s range runs through eastern and central Iran, north to adjacent parts of Turkmenistan, placing the species on either side of the Iran–Turkmenistan border. Within this range it lives in subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, freshwater marshes and freshwater springs, a combination that points to an animal tied closely to permanent or semi-permanent water in an otherwise dry landscape: the shrubland supplies cover and foraging ground, while the marshes and springs supply the moisture a toad cannot do without.
Behaviour and breeding
Published sources do not yet describe the breeding behaviour, call or clutch of Bufotes oblongus in detail. Its dependence on freshwater marshes and springs suggests these waters double as its breeding sites, but that link has not been confirmed in any source this guide can open, so it is noted here as an inference rather than a fact.
Conservation
The IUCN category for the Eastern Persian toad is given in the facts box above. Its range lies largely within the arid uplands of eastern Iran and adjoining Turkmenistan, where freshwater marshes and springs are a limited and locally important resource; a toad confined to such scattered wet pockets in an otherwise dry shrubland depends on each of them remaining intact even where its overall conservation status is not yet a cause for concern.
Similar species
Bufotes oblongus shares its genus with several other Palearctic green toads, none of which yet has a description on this guide to compare it against directly. What the record does show is a taxonomic history unsettled enough that Bufotes oblongus has passed through the genera Bufo and Pseudepidalea, and carried at least one other species name, Bufo danatensis, along the way before arriving at its current name — a reminder that, within this genus, species boundaries are still being worked out.