Rhacophorus reinwardtii, the green flying frog, is a treefrog of Southeast Asia and southern China named for the webbed feet it uses to glide between branches rather than for any unusual call or behaviour on the ground. It also goes by black-webbed treefrog, Reinwardt’s flying frog and Reinwardt’s treefrog, and was first described by the German naturalist Hermann Schlegel in 1840. It is found in China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and possibly Brunei and Myanmar.
Identification
Females grow larger than males, reaching about 89 mm (3.5 in) in length; the facts box carries the figure. Colouring runs from light to dark green with black markings on the back and head, and males carry extra colour on the flanks not seen in females, with sides in orange, green, purple, black and yellow. The eyes are light green, light yellow or light grey, with horizontal pupils. As in other members of its genus, long, strongly webbed toes let the frog control a gliding descent when it jumps from tree to tree, the habit that gives the genus its “flying” name.
Habitat and range
The species occupies subtropical or tropical moist lowland and montane forests, and freshwater marshes, including intermittent ones, across the countries listed above. That spread, from lowland forest up into hill and montane forest, and from permanent marsh to water bodies that dry up for part of the year, gives it more room to find a breeding site than a species tied to a single forest type.
Behaviour and breeding
Detailed behavioural studies specific to this species are scarce, but it shares its genus’s reproductive strategy: Rhacophorus frogs lay their eggs in aerial foam nests, and the tadpoles drop to the water below once they hatch and complete their development there. The same long toes with strong webbing between them that mark the species out in the hand let it glide from tree to tree between these breeding bouts.
Conservation
The facts box carries the species’ current IUCN Red List category, Least Concern. That listing sits alongside a range spanning China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and possibly Brunei and Myanmar across six confirmed countries in mainland and island Southeast Asia.
Similar species
The closest look-alike is Rhacophorus nigropalmatus, Wallace’s flying frog, which overlaps part of this species’ range in Southeast Asia: R. reinwardtii is smaller and shows orange rather than yellow fringes on its webbing, the clearest field mark against the larger species. The frog is also easily confused with its own closest relative, Rhacophorus kio: before 2006 the two were treated as a single species, and R. kio still shares the same orange-toned web fringes rather than the black-and-yellow webbing of R. nigropalmatus.