Golden toad led bachelors to attack amplectant pairs and form what has been described as a "writhing masses of toad balls". During the 1977 and 1982 seasons, males outnumbered females by over 8 to 1 at breeding pools. Each toad couple produced 200–400 eggs each week for the six-week mating period, with each egg approximately 3 mm in diameter. The eggs of the golden toad, black and tan spheres, were deposited in small pools often no more than one-inch deep. Tadpoles emerged in a matter of days, but required another four or five weeks for metamorphosis. During this period, they were highly
Crustacean larva long rostrum, and a spine on either side of the carapace; the first post-larva closely resembles the adult. Porcelain crabs have two or three larval stages, in which the rostrum and the posterior spine on the carapace are "enormously long". Hermit crabs pass through around four larval stages. The post-larva is known as the "glaucothoe", after a genus named by Henri Milne-Edwards in 1830. The glaucothoe is long in "Pagurus longicarpus", but glaucothoe larvae up to are known, and were once thought to represent animals which had failed to develop correctly. Like the preceding stages, the glaucothoe is symmetrical, and