Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Researchers have discovered seven new species of a brightly colored miniature frogs belonging to a genus known as Brachycephalus in the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil. This adds new members to a group that represents some of the smallest terrestrial vertebrates on Earth.
The team responsible for the discovery was led by Marcio Pie, a professor with the Universidade Federal do Paraná, and they spent nearly five years exploring the mountainous regions of those Brazilian rainforests finding the new, endemic species that are said to be vulnerable to extinction.
In a statement, the study authors explained that the new species are restricted to cloud forests in one of a handful of adjacent mountaintops, which is what makes them prone to threats caused by shifts in the distribution of cloud forest due to climate change. Their adaptation to these habitats keeps them from migrating, but also promotes the formation of new species.
Small, colorful, endangered creatures
Pie’s team reported that adult members of these frog species are often less than one centimeter in length, and this has caused several unique adaptations, include a reduction in the number of fingers and toes that they have. Furthermore, the frogs tend to be brightly colored, possibly as a warning to the presence of a potent poison in their skin known as tetrodotoxin.
The first Brachycephalus species was discovered by German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix in 1842. However, the majority of species in the genus have only been discovered within the last 10 years, due largely to their endemic nature and the difficulty explorers often have in reaching the remote mountain regions where they live. The seven newly discovered species represents the single largest addition ever to the known diversity of the genus, the authors said.
“The most impressive characteristic of these species is how small their geographical ranges are,” Professor Pie told redOrbit via email. “Some of them are only found in one or a few neighboring mountaintops, which makes them particularly fragile.” (Especially to climate change.)
“Even if there is no deforestation or other sources of impact, a changing climate could affect the distribution of cloud forests and could rapidly lead these small populations to extinction,” added Pie. Now that these creatures have been identified, he said that his team “can work with state and federal environmental protection agencies to propose reserves and other management efforts to ensure their long-term maintenance.”
Luiz Ribeiro, a research associate at the Mater Natura Institute for Environmental Studies who was also involved the research, said in a statement that this is “only the beginning,” and that the team had “already found additional species that we are in the process of formally describing.”
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