A Clockwork Naturalist
Biologist-in-training, alien of letters.
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Found this handsome critter chilling in the garden next to the cucumbers, this evening. I’d never seen this type of frog, (I believe it to be a frog, rather than a toad, but I could be wrong), before, but then, I am terrible with the flora and fauna of my home region. Such colors on it, though! At any rate, I’d like to have it identified, if I may. Here is another, even less clear photo. For reference, I am located in New York’s Hudson Valley region. Anyone recognize it?
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Mark Brown, Wired UK, July 14, 2011 -
“Herpetologists at Conservation International have rediscovered the exotic Sambas stream toad (aka Borneo rainbow toad, aka Ansonia latidisca) after 87 years of evasion, and released the first ever photographs of the brightly colored amphibian.
The spindly-legged species was last seen in 1924 and European explorers in Borneo only made monochrome illustrations of it. A decade or so later, the CI and the SSC Amphibian Specialist Group added the species to its World’s Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs campaign.”
Thanks for the heads-up, Mom!
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ScienceDaily (May 6, 2011) -
For more than two hundred years, the question of why there are more species in the tropics has been a biological enigma. A particularly perplexing aspect is why so many species live together in a small area in the tropics, especially at some sites in the rainforests of the Amazon Basin in South America.
New research on the evolution and ecology of treefrogs, published online in the journal Ecology Letters, sheds new light on the puzzle. The patterns found in treefrogs may also help to explain the high species richness of other groups of organisms — such as trees, birds and insects — in the Amazon rainforests. [full story].
A treefrog (Osteocephalus heyeri) from the Amazonian rainforest. (Credit: Photo by Dan Moen)
