New Shrub Frog Discovered
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 20th, 2008
The tiny shrub frog (Philautus ochlandrae) lives in bamboo hollows.
This new species of shrub frog from the Western Ghats adds its name to the growing list of frogs discovered recently. The latest is a tiny oriental shrub frog, named Philautus ochlandrae, discovered in the cool evergreen forests of the Kakkayam Reserve Forest in Kerala, India.
The squat little amphibian does not grow beyond 2.5 cm, has a short rounded snout and protruding eyes with striking golden yellow markings. With this, the number of frog species discovered in the last seven years in India stands at 25. The discovery was published in the international journal Zootaxa in October 2007.
The frog lives in the hollows of bamboo reeds in the forests of the Western Ghats, where rain is abundant and temperatures are low, said K.V. Gururaja, doctoral fellow at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He is one of the five authors of the paper. The co-authors are T.V. Ramachandra, Professor, CES, IISc; and K.P. Dinesh, Muhamed Jafer Palot and C. Radhakrishnan, of the Western Ghats Field Research Station, Zoological Survey of India.
This shrub frog belongs to a group in which an unusual phenomenon called “direct development” takes place. “Skipping the tadpole stage, froglets directly emerge from the eggs that are laid in the inner walls of the bamboo,” said Dr. Gururaja. With this adaptation, the frogs do not need water to breed, he said.
Source: Divya Gandhi, “New frog species found in Kerala,” The Hindu, India, Sunday, January 20, 2008.
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Keep the amphibian discoveries coming. Very good news indeed.
I believe there are many more species yet to discover.
I am not surprised that this little guy remained hidden for so long, since it is only 1 inch long and lives inside hollow bamboo. There is a similar sized frog, the Cuban Greenhouse Frog, which is now also found in Florida and South Alabama, that has the same kind of life cycle, skipping past the tadpole stage entirely.
Wouldn’t that make them not amphibians?
All frogs are considered amphibians-they have thin skin that can absorb water, and jellylike eggs with no shells. I think those are the main critera for being an amphibian, although the vast majority of them do have an aquatic larval or tadpole stage.