New frog species discovered

JULY 18, 2019

by University of Central Florida

UCF student Veronica Urgiles has helped describe two new frog species discovered in Ecuador, and she named one of them after one of her professors.

Urgiles and an international team of researchers just published their findings in the journal ZooKeys.

"Frogs are by far my favorite," said Urgiles, who is pursuing a master's degree in biology. "So, getting to describe and name two of them is terrific. I have been looking at these frogs for years now, so going over the whole process of observing them in their habitats and then analyzing them and comparing them under the microscope, to finally naming them is a long, but very satisfying journey."

Urgiles, a 2017 Fulbright scholar and the lead author, said she chose to attend UCF for its integration of genetics and genomics in biodiversity research and the emphasis on real-world application. She works with Assistant Professor Anna Savage who specializes in species diversity based on molecular analyses.

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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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These Gourmet Snakes Prefer to Eat Snails

By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer | June 14, 2018 11:00am ET

There's something strange about the five newly discovered snakes in Ecuador: Unlike most snakes that dine on rats, lizards and other small animals, these slithery reptiles eat snails.

And that's pretty much all these snakes can eat. There are now 75 known species of snail-eaters, according to a new study on the reptiles.

"The jaws of these snakes are modified so much that they cannot eat anything that isn't a snail or a slug," said lead study author Alejandro Arteaga, a doctoral student with the American Museum of National History in New York. "Sometimes, you can see [one] hanging from vegetation with a snail in its mouth," he said. [7 Shocking Snake Stories]

Indeed, snail-eating snakes have a jawline that has evolved to slurp the snail right out of its shell — but the snakes do this without suction (in other words, it's not the way we slurp oysters from a shell). To extract their escargot, the snakes push their lower jaws into the shell and grasp the flesh of the slimy critter with their curved teeth. Once the snakes have a firm grasp, they pull the prey out without crushing the shell — a process that usually takes a few minutes.

This snail-slurping "is an interesting adaptation," Arteaga told Live Science. Because not many snakes feed on these snails, the predators don't have much competition for food, he added.

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Ancient dolphin species Urkudelphis chawpipacha discovered in Ecuador

Small dolphin skull may have belonged to river dolphin ancestor from the Oligocene

Date:December 22, 2017

Source:PLOS

Summary:An extinct dolphin species likely from the Oligocene has been discovered. The fossil is one of the few fossil dolphins from the equator, and is a reminder that Oligocene cetaceans may have ranged widely in tropical waters.

Read on

Ecuador firms sell rare frogs to save them from poachers – via Herp Digest

TRTWorld, 7/18/17

Poachers in Ecuador have long known the hefty prices their country's rare frogs can fetch.

But now environmentally conscious firms are starting to sell the amphibians in their bid to try and save them from the black market and threatened extinction.

In San Rafael outside the capital Quito, the scientific company Wikiri is raising 12 species of frog.

Some are native only to Ecuador, while others are at risk at disappearing from their natural habitat elsewhere.

After being raised in hundreds of terrariums, they are sent to Canada, US, Japan and various European countries for up to $600 each.

That high value "gives you an idea just how profitable frog poaching can be," Lola Guarderas, manager of the facility, said.

To illustrate her point, Guarderas showed a glass frog, with translucent skin through which its organs and beating red heart could be seen, as it moved along the edge of its container.

The frogs are reproduced in labs, so as not to affect local fauna.

They are then put into an "ethical bio-trade" circuit that is the opposite of the poachers' illegal smuggling and sales.

Ecuador, a relatively small South American nation, is home to one of the biggest displays of biodiversity on the planet. It holds more than 600 species of frogs, of which nearly half can be found only in the country.

According to Ecuador's environment ministry, 186 of the species are at risk of becoming extinct.

Authorities have banned the capture and sale of all wild animals.

Recently, the Jambatu Center announced something of a breakthrough: the reproduction in captivity for the first time of Atelopus ignescens, or the Quito stubfoot toad.

The black amphibian used to be widespread in Ecuador's Andean regions but was thought to have become extinct three decades ago until a tiny population was found last year.

Forty-three of the toads were taken to the Jambatu Center which, after several tries, managed to procure 500 tadpoles from one couple.

In total, the research facility works on around 40 species typically found in Ecuador or otherwise native to several other South American countries.

A dozen are offered for export, including the Agalychnis spurrelli, or gliding tree frog; the Cruziohyla calcarifer, or splendid leaf frog, with its striped yellow belly and long legs; and the Hyalinobatrachium aureoguttatum, which has a translucent body dotted with yellow spots.

Around 500 frogs per year are sold, adding to an annual flow from other Latin American countries that amounts to as many as 7,000, sent everywhere in the world.

The hope is to undermine the black market trafficking of the animals.

"Illicit trafficking in amphibians in the world is a very big activity," biologist Luis Coloma, director of the Jambatu Center, said.

According to Ecuador's environment ministry, 18 frog species have already apparently disappeared, robbing the country of some of its rich biodiversity.

Boy finds ‘extinct’ frog in Ecuador and helps revive species

7 July 2017

By Lou Del Bello

A school-age boy has rediscovered an Ecuadorian frog considered extinct for at least 30 years. The animal has now successfully bred in captivity.

The colourful Jambato harlequin frog (Atelopus ignescens) was once so widespread in Ecuador that it turned up in people’s homes, was something children played with and was used as an ingredient in traditional medicine. Then it was suddenly wiped out, probably by a combination of climate change and fungal disease.

“It was such a long-standing presence in the Ecuadorian community that we would have never conceived it could disappear,” says Luis Coloma of the Jambatu Center for Research and Conservation of Amphibians.

.

But it did. Until now, that is.

In 2016, the centre offered a $1000 cash prize for anyone able to find the lost frog, not expecting success but hoping to raise awareness of amphibian conservation.

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See-through frog has heart you can see beating through its chest

25 May 2017
 

By Lou del Bello

A newly discovered glass frog species whose beating heart is visible through its chest is already feared to be in danger, because its habitat is threatened by oil exploitation.

The frog (Hyalinobatrachium yaku), identified through a combination of fieldwork in the Amazonian lowlands of Ecuador and DNA sequencing in the lab, displays unique physical and behavioural traits.

The dark green spots on its back and its call and reproductive behaviour mark it out as different from already known frogs.

“Males guard the eggs, which are attached below a tree’s leaves, until they hatch and fall on the below water stream,” says Juan Guayasamin, of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, in Ecuador. “I work with frogs every day and this is one of the most beautiful species I have ever seen.”

“Not all glass frogs have hearts that are visible through the chest. In some, the heart itself is white, so you don’t see the red blood,” says Paul Hamilton, of US non-profit organisation the Biodiversity Group.
Under threat

It’s not known why different species have different levels of transparency, but this frog “will help us understand the evolutionary pattern that led to frogs being glass-like”,

“Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class on the planet,” says Ariadne Angulo of the amphibian specialist group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “The group’s species richness has not been fully discovered yet. Since 2005, we have been identifying between 100 and 200 new amphibian species per year.”

Far fewer new mammals and birds are discovered, because a higher proportion of species have already been described, says Angulo. However, she adds, “because there are so many undiscovered amphibian species out there, given our current rate of environmental degradation, some may become extinct before we even know them”.

The Cerberus Groundsnake is a Critically Endangered new species from Ecuador

Scientists study the hereditary molecular differences in the most species-rich snake genus in attempt to shed light on problematic species delimitation

Date: March 22, 2017

Source: Pensoft Publishers

With as many as 140 species, Atractus is the most diverse snake genus in the world, even though it can be found exclusively in Central and South America. However, these colubrid ground snakes seem largely under-researched, since there have been thirty-three species discovered in the last ten years only.

As concluded by a team of scientists, led by Alejandro Arteaga, Tropical Herping, Ecuador, this is the result of a lack of DNA information in the original descriptions of many of these species. Consequently, there have been a lot of specimens sitting in museum collection that remain either misidentified, or anonymous.

To address the issue around the problematic identification of these snakes and their correct placement in the tree of life, the scientists have studied the hereditary molecular differences in the genus using both newly collected specimens, as well as previous publications on the species occurring in the Pacific lowlands and the adjacent Andean slopes.

Their research results in a new paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, which describes a total of three new species from Ecuador. The authors also propose a new species group and a redefinition of a previously established one.

Interestingly, one of the new species is to be referred to as Cerberus Groundsnake, while in the books it will appear under Atractus cerberus. It is predominantly brown in colour with faint black longitudinal bands, and measures about 21 -- 31 cm in length. The biologists justify the curious name of this species with the peculiar location where they spotted the first known specimen. Found at the gates of the newly formed "Refinería del Pacífico," a massive industrial oil-processing plant, the authors were quick to recall the multi-headed monstrous dog Cerberus, known to be guarding the gates of the underworld, according to Greek mythology.

Continued  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170322103717.htm