Sunday 20 January 2019

New species of tree frog from Ecuador has a mysterious claw


by Mongabay.com on 7 January 2019
A team of biologists surveying a remote and largely unexplored part of the Andes in Ecuador have described a new species of tree frog that’s dark brown in color, with bright orange flecks dotting its body.
The researchers have named the tree frog Hyloscirtus hillisi, after David Hillis, a U.S. evolutionary biologist known for his work on the Hyloscirtus genus of tree frogs.
While the researchers don’t have an estimate of the frog’s population, they think its numbers are likely low.
The species’ small habitat also lies near a large-scale mining operation, putting the frog at immediate risk of extinction.
A team of biologists surveying remote parts of the Cordillera del Cóndor (Condor mountain range) in Ecuador’s eastern Andes have described a species of tree frog that’s new to science.
The dark brown frog with bright orange flecks dotting its body wasn’t easy to find. The researchers had to walk along very steep terrain in the largely unexplored Cordillera del Cóndor to reach the slopes of a tabletop limestone mountain where they encountered the frog. Moreover, the frogs tended to blend with the environment, making them hard to spot.

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