Purple Frog - Ecology

Ecology

The frog spends most of the year underground, surfacing only for about two weeks, during the monsoon, for purposes of mating. The frog's reclusive lifestyle is what caused the species to escape earlier notice by biologists. A female specimen was found nearly 8 metres below the ground level. The breeding season is during the pre-monsoon rains. The males call from a burrow beside a stream and mount females. While in amplexus in the pectoral position the male holds the vertebral column of the female. The pair enters a crevice in a rock pool amid a flowing stream and lay their eggs. About 3000 eggs are laid. The tadpoles metamorphose after about 100 days.

Unlike many other burrowing species of frogs that emerge and feed above the ground, this species has been found to forage underground feeding mainly on termites using their tongue and a special buccal groove.