June 2009. Two new species of frogs have been discovered in Western Australia according to the Western Australian Museum.
Tiny Toadlet
The first species is called the Tiny Toadlet (Uperoleia micra) and is just over 2 cm long. It was discovered near the Prince Regent River when it was first heard calling near the field expedition base camp at Bachsten Creek. The new species is extremely shy and would not have been discovered if its call did not differ from those of three related species in the area.
‘Toadlets‘ are not true toads, but a group of native frogs that have a stocky appearance. The Kimberley is host to the highest diversity of Toadlets in Australia.
Kimberley Froglet
The Kimberley Froglet (Crinia fimbriata), was discovered on the Mitchell Plateau - an area previously believed to have been well surveyed for frogs. It is also about 2 cm in length. It was noticed owing to its blue and red background colour and covered with tiny white dots, similar to some Aboriginal painting styles. Males of this species have flanges on the fingers, but it is not known what the flanges might be used for.
The discovery of two frog species in the northwest Kimberley emphasises the high diversity of the area, and is timely owing to current State and National reviews of the area’s biodiversity assets. The very rugged northwest Kimberley region is being increasingly impacted by tourism, industry, feral weeds, cattle and soon the Cane Toad.
High level of endemism
Dr. Paul Doughty, WA Museum Curator of Herpetology said “The northwest Kimberley has a high diversity of frogs and reptiles that are unique to the region, as it receives high rainfall in summer and the area is cut-off by drier regions to the south. Many of the species that occur there have been evolving there in isolation for millions of years, and there are certainly more species to discover from the area.” …
The discovery of the frogs from the high rainfall zone of the northwest Kimberley were formally described this week in the Records of the Western Australian Museum and Zootaxa.
A bug-eyed salamander that looks like ET and a see-through frog are among the weirder species that were discovered by conservation biologists in a far-flung corner of Ecuador.
They were discovered in the Cordillera del Cóndor, an outlier of the main Andean chain which rises to a maximum elevation of about 2900 metres and marks part of the international border between Ecuador and Peru. Because of its geographical seclusion from the rest of the Andes, the Cordillera is thought to be home to many unique species that have evolved in isolation.
Peru and Ecuador fought over the region for more than 160 years and only agreed on the exact location of their border in 1998.
They discovered a number of species which they believe are new to science, including a bug-eyed salamander, a tiny, endangered poison arrow frog, a colourful, polka-dotted lizard and a number of bizarre-looking crickets.
They also found a number of endangered species including Hyalinobatrachium pellucidum, a glass or crystal frog that has translucent skin.
New species of phallus-shaped mushroom named after California Academy of Sciences scientist
Dr. Robert Drewes calls the naming of Phallus drewesii, discovered on the African island of Sao Tome, a ‘wonderful honor’
SAN FRANCISCO (June 15, 2009) - It’s two inches long, grows on wood, and is shaped like a phallus. A new species of stinkhorn mushroom, Phallus drewesii, has been discovered on the African island of Sao Tome and graces the upcoming cover of the journal Mycologia. The mushroom is named after Robert Drewes, Curator of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, and is described in the July/August issue by Professor Dennis Desjardin and Brian Perry of San Francisco State University.
Phallus drewesii belongs to a group of mushrooms known as stinkhorns which give off a foul, rotting meat odor. There are 28 other species of Phallus fungi worldwide, but this particular species is notable for its small size, white net-like stem, and brown spore-covered head. It is also the only Phallus species to curve downward instead of upward.
“The mushroom emerges from an egg and elongates over four hours,” says Desjardin, who is also a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. “Its odor attracts flies who consume the spores and disperse them throughout the forest.”
Desjardin and Perry named the new species after Drewes as an acknowledgment of his “inspiration and fortitude to initiate, coordinate and lead multiorganism biotic surveys on Sao Tome and Principe,” according to the Mycologia paper.
“It’s a wonderful honor and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me,” says Drewes. “I have been immortalized in the scientific record.”
Phallus drewesii is not the first species to bear Drewes’ name. A small moss frog native to South Africa (Arthroleptella drewesii) and a blind worm snake from Kenya (Leptotyphlops drewesi) were described in 1994 and 1996, respectively.
Three different species of frogs have been discovered living in the dung of the Asian elephant in southeastern Sri Lanka. The discovery—the first time anyone has recorded frogs living in elephant droppings—has widespread conservation implications both for frogs and Asian elephants, which are in decline.
“I found the frogs fortuitously during a field study about seed dispersal by elephants,” Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, a research fellow from the University of Tokyo, told Monagaby.com. “I thought it was an interesting phenomenon and commented it with some colleagues, experts on elephant and amphibian ecology. None of them had heard about such a thing before. Local people in the study area…seemed also unaware of it.”
This led Campos-Arciez on a hunt. He examined 290 elephant dung piles and found six frog individuals in five dung piles, representing three species: the ornate narrow-mouthed frog Microhyla ornata, another narrow-mouthed species Microhyla rubra, and a frog species in the Sphaerotheca genus. …
As Campos-Arciez alludes to, he found more than just frogs taking refuge in the elephant droppings. Although frogs were the only vertebrates, he also found beetles, ants, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, crickets, spiders, and termites, “suggesting that a dung pile can become a small ecosystem on its own,” Campos-Arciez writes in the paper announcing his discoveries in Biotropica.
Males of the Edible Frog (Rana kl. esculenta)singing together to attract a female. These frogs were filmed in Belgium.
I have often seen edible frogs in and near the “dream pond”. Usually, those sightings have been extremely brief: frogs which one only starts to note as they jump away from cover just before one’s feet very quickly, then disappearing. However, this morning, quite some edible frogs are sitting quietly on a small log in the middle of the dream pond. Two of them, on the right hand side of the log, are mating: the female is darker green and bigger than the male.
Then, a long-tailed tit. Maybe it is close to its nest, as I hear the sound of young birds.
On the waterlily leaves, like yesterday, red-eyed damselflies.
A wren, sitting just three metres away on a conifer branch, calling.
On the meadow: shelduck, lapwing. An oystercatcher drives a carrion crow away.
Barn swallows. Grey heron.
A song thrush on the path.
Sounds of green woodpecker, chiffchaff, robin, and chaffinch.
Then, we hear a wryneck sound in a distant tree. When the Polish biologist in our group plays a recorded wryneck sound, the bird immediately flies to the big tree above our heads.
This is a video of a wryneck; recorded in Breskens, the Netherlands.
The wryneck keeps calling, while making the neck movements from which its name is derived.
Meanwhile, under the wryneck tree, a common frog jumps through the grass.
A white stork arrives back on its nest, where its sitting partner welcomes its with a clattering sound. Hear stork clattering sound here (especially the lowest of the two sound files on that page).
We reach the bridge, where we put up the telescope.
Across the river, we see two cranes. They are asleep already, though it is not really dark yet.
Then, not far from the cranes, we see a fox. Probably, the fox is eating something quite big, as it keeps eating for a long time. However, the long vegetation hides what exactly the fox is eating.
A lapwing tries to drive the fox away, by flying closely to it and calling loudly. This wakes up the cranes, who stand up and start calling.
A black-tailed godwit tries to drive the fox away. It has as little success as the lapwing: the fox keeps eating.
Then, a redshank tries. The fox is still unimpressed.
The lapwing tries again, with the same result.
Meanwhile, the cranes have started dancing. These big birds are apparently the only ones which might impress the fox enough to leave its meal. However, will they do it? Sometimes, one crane walks to within a few meter of the fox. The fox then lifts it head to watch. As soon as the crane walks away, it starts eating again. Sometimes, both cranes walk to within a few meter of the fox. Again, it lifts it head. And goes back to its food, as soon as the cranes walk away again.
Then, the night falls, making it impossible to see how this story ends.
Like the skylark before, a yellowhammer takes a sand bath on the road.
Eastern Poland is famous for a bird which about reaches its western limit here: the barred barbler. Sometimes, we hear it from dense bushes. But it is about as secretive as the little crake of Bialystok. I just managed to see its tail, and movements indicating that it was cleaning its feathers. Others had more luck.
