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Pelobates cultripes, the Iberian spadefoot, is a big, smooth-skinned, burrowing toad of the family Pelobatidae, found across the Iberian Peninsula — Spain, Portugal, and a small part of southwestern France. It is larger and greener than the common spadefoot, Pelobates fuscus, and is named for the black, blade-like tubercle on each hind foot that it uses to dig itself backwards into loose ground. Outside the breeding season it spends most of its time underground, surfacing mainly after rain, when vast numbers can appear at once.
Identification
This is a large toad for its family, reaching up to 110 mm (11 cm) snout-vent length. The upper surface is greyish-yellowish with dark brown or greenish blotches and spots, and like other pelobatids it has a squat body and smooth skin. The eye is distinctive: silvery gold or greenish, with a vertical pupil. The clearest field mark is on the hind foot, where the callus on the inner edge is hardened into a black, blade-like spade used for digging — darker than the pale spade of its closest relative. Tadpoles, too, stand out: they grow larger than those of most other toad species.
Habitat and range
The species occupies open areas with soft or sandy soils across the Iberian Peninsula, up to about 1,800 m elevation, ranging into Spain, Portugal, and a small part of southwestern France. As with other spadefoot toads, loose, diggable ground matters more than any particular landscape type: it hides in burrows up to 20 cm deep and can dig itself into earth quite fast. For breeding it turns to temporary water bodies, sometimes brackish, rather than permanent ponds or lakes.
Behaviour and breeding
The Iberian spadefoot is mostly nocturnal, staying underground by day and emerging to feed or breed after dark or rain. When threatened, its first response is defensive display rather than flight: it inflates its body and mews, kitten-like. Breeding takes place in temporary, sometimes brackish, pools, and how long the season lasts is dictated by rainfall, running anywhere from a single month down to just a few days in a dry year. During mating, males grab females at the loins, and a female can lay bands of up to 7,000 eggs, each band up to 100 cm long. Eggs hatch after about two weeks, and the tadpoles take roughly four to six months to develop — slow by the standards of its family, whose tadpoles elsewhere can reach the adult form in as little as two weeks, with some turning cannibalistic on brood-mates to speed their own growth under pressure from drying ponds. Newly metamorphosed toadlets measure 2 to 3.5 cm long and take three years to reach sexual maturity. Males call from the water with a deep, rapid “co-co-co” that sounds like a clucking hen; females call occasionally too. Adults can live up to 15 years, and after predation, a drying pond is the most common cause of death for eggs and tadpoles caught out by a short breeding window.
Conservation
The IUCN category is shown in the facts box above. The species’ reliance on temporary, often brackish breeding pools leaves it exposed wherever those seasonal wetlands are drained or built over, since pond drying is already the leading natural cause of death for its eggs and tadpoles even without habitat loss added on top.
Similar species
The Iberian spadefoot’s closest relative is the common spadefoot, Pelobates fuscus, of Central Europe and Western Asia; the two do not share a range, so geography alone usually settles an identification. Where a comparison is needed, the Iberian spadefoot is larger and greener, growing up to 11 cm against the common spadefoot’s smaller size, and carries a black rather than pale spade on the hind foot. Both belong to a family of squat-bodied, smooth-skinned burrowers with vertical pupils and a hardened digging tubercle on each hind foot, a shape shared with the family’s other spadefoot species further east. None of these relatives reach the Iberian Peninsula, so within its own range the black-spaded hind foot and greenish, blotched back are enough to identify this toad on sight.