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.

Continued  

New Jaguar Frog Discovered on Abandoned Highway – via Herp Digest

The spotted amphibian may already be at risk of extinction, a new study says. Go to http://bit.ly/2A4SFcs, scan to bottom of page for video.

Researcher discovered the jaguar-snouted tree frog on a former highway in Brazil. 

PHOTOGRAPH BY RAFAEL DE FRAGA

By Elaina Zachoa, National Geographic, 11/23/17

Scientists have discovered a new species of tree frog in an unusual place—a stretch of abandoned highway in Brazil.

When herpetologists first heard male frogs calling in the Amazon rain forest, they suspected the unknown sound came from a species completely new to science. Rafael de Fraga, a herpetologist at the National Institute of Research of the Amazon, and colleagues later confirmed it via genetic analysis.

The team named the species Scinax onca, or the jaguar snouted tree frog, due to its spotted skin and the prevalence of big cats they found in the area.

"During the sampling expeditions we were also lucky enough to spot several jaguars," says de Fraga, who noted the sightings unnerved some of his team.

But, he noted, "the highway is definitely more dangerous than jaguars [because] many people have died there by car crash or fallen bridges.”

The newfound frog is the 27th species of Scinax—the snouted genus of tree frogs—known from the Amazon Basin. There are more than 800 species of tree frogs worldwide. (Read about three warty toad species found in Brazil.

The confluence of the Purus and Madeira Rivers where the frog lives is "very special from a biological point of view," de Fraga says. That's because it is home to a diverse array of species, including the closely related Scinax iquitorum tree frog.

A Fleeting Find?

So far, not much is known about the newly identified creature, described in a recent study in the journal Zookeys.

The orange-eyed frog measures less than two inches and has a white groin with black spots. It's also sexually dimorphic, meaning female frogs are larger than males.

De Fraga says the amphibian's scratchy call sounds like a woodsaw, and the male's mating trill lasts a little over 100 milliseconds. (See more tree frog pictures.)

"[The discovery is] not a huge surprise, but it's indicative of kind of a push within Brazil to understand the environment," says Darrel Frost, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, who wasn't involved in the study.

Although about one new species discovered in the Amazon every other day, species are dying out before they're even identified. Amphibians in particular are disappearing at alarming rates, due to factors such as the deadly chytrid fungus and deforestation.

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De Fraga suspects the frog is endangered, and is further imperiled by plans to recover the derelict highway, which will likely lead to habitat destruction for several species.

"We are not totally opposed to the highway recovering, because many local people live completely isolated from basic resources such as hospitals," de Fraga says.

"But it is rather disturbing to watch the region being converted into urban areas without any concern for the biodiversity that is being lost."

Tree frog believed to be extinct for more than 100 years rediscovered

An ‘extinct’ tree frog has been rediscovered after 136 years ‘by accident’, a group of scientists have confirmed

By Mark Molloy

10:12AM GMT 21 Jan 2016

A tree frog thought to be extinct for more than a century has been rediscovered in the jungles of north-east India.

The frog genus Frankixalus has been rediscovered “in abundance” by a group of scientists led by renowned Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju, who is known as The Frog Man in India.

However, the team believe they remain under threat with the region's tropical forests disappearing because of programs to cut trees, plant rice, expand human settlements and build roads, AP reports.

“This is an exciting find, but it doesn't mean the frogs are safe,” Biju said.

“This frog is facing extreme stress in these areas, and could be pushed to extinction simply from habitat loss,” Biju added. “We're lucky in a way to have found it before that happens, but we're all worried.”

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Unusual parenting behavior by Southeast Asian species of tree frog discovered - via Herp Digest

May 28, 2014, Source: National University of Singapore

Researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Science have discovered that a Southeast Asian species of treefrog practices parental care to increase the likelihood of survival of its offspring. Chiromantis hansenae (C. hansenae), is currently the only species in the treefrog family in Southeast Asia that is known to exhibit such behaviour. This discovery was recently published as the cover story in a popular magazine of nature and science, Natural History, in May 2014.

The study investigates parental care in a frog of Southeast Asia, specifically, the small treefrog, C. hansenae, which is found in mainly in the northeastern forests of Thailand and parts of Cambodia. It is the first systematic observational and experimental study that shows the benefits to the offspring as a result of parental care in a Southeast Asian amphibian. Previous reports of parental care in amphibians in the region were purely observational.

The researchers, Assistant Professor David Bickford and Ms Sinlan Poo, a PhD student, from the NUS Department of Biological Sciences, observed that C. hansenae exhibits a form of parental care, known as egg attendance, in which a parent remains with the egg mass at a fixed location. These frogs care for their offspring by covering the egg mass with its body. Occasionally, the females will make trips down to the pond, presumably to soak up more water, and return to secrete the liquid over the egg mass, keeping it moist.

By comparing offspring survival between natural egg masses and egg masses where parent frogs were experimentally removed, the researchers found that although C. hansenae breeds very close to water sources, there is still an extremely high risk of the eggs drying out, a process called egg desiccation. As such, the behaviour of the parent is essential to the survival of their offspring. The researchers made these findings after conducting a total of 1,448 field observations of the 126 egg masses over two years, from July 2011 to October 2012.

While egg attendance is the most common form of parental care in amphibians, C. hansenae has a number of life-history characteristics that deviate from other species with parental care. For example, most frogs with parental care have fewer and larger eggs, breed in more terrestrial habitats, and males care for direct-developing eggs, which are eggs that hatch as frogs directly. In contrast, C. hansenae has lots of tiny eggs, breed above ponds, and females care for non-direct-developing eggs, which are eggs with a free-swimming tadpole stage. The researchers concluded that the unusual parental care in C. hansenae plays a critical role in preventing egg desiccation and is a possible mechanism for buffering environmental pressures for their offspring.

The study is timely as C. hansenae is listed as Data Deficient under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. A recent study by Dr Samuel Howard from the Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Lab at NUS led by Asst Prof Bickford, showed that Data Deficient amphibians are likely to be more threatened than species that are fully assessed. The research also highlights the importance of field research in a region where very little in known about the life history and behavior of most species.

Said Ms Poo, “Our study is the first experimental investigation of parental care in Southeast Asia, a region with over 700 species of amphibians. This highlights the need for more of such natural history studies. Currently, much of the mechanisms, adaptations, and driving forces of egg attendance in C. hansenae require further exploration, through which a more coherent understanding of parental care can be formed.”

Said Asst Prof Bickford, “This research is significant because Sinlan has shown how parental care works in Asian treefrogs, at least in the context of her study system in Thailand. Moreover, the impact for the larger scientific community is that we now know more about how and why parental care evolves, and the forces like evolution and natural selection that enable such behaviors to evolve – even in frogs.”

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National University of Singapore. "Unusual parenting behaviour by Southeast Asian species of treefrog discovered." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 May 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140528103030.htm>.

Nature's big picture: The prince's frog

A newly discovered tree frog has been named after Prince Charles in recognition of his charity work to protect their rainforest homes. Hyloscirtus princecharlesi, or the Prince Charles stream tree frog, was first discovered by Dr. Luis A. Coloma in 2008 amongst specimens collected for a museum. A subsequent expedition in the Cotacachi-Cayapas National Park, Ecuador, found limited numbers of the frogs after areas of the forest were cleared for agriculture. Two juvenile frogs are now being raised in captivity as part of the Amphibian Ark project in the hope they will breed and eventually boost populations in the wild.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18712674