A team of scientists from Germany, Colombia and Panama led by Prof Andrew Crawford of the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota has described a new species of the frog genus Andinobates.
Andinobates geminisae. Image credit: Cesar Jaramillo / Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
The newly-discovered species belongs to the so-called Andinobates minutus (Blue-bellied poison frog) group in the family Dendrobatidae.
It differs from all other members of the group by having uniformly orange smooth skin over the entire body.
It was named Andinobates geminisae for Geminis Vargas, “the beloved wife of Dr Marcos Ponce of the Universidad Autonoma de Chiriqui [co-author of the discovery], for her unconditional support of his studies of Panamanian herpetology.”
Several individuals of Andinobates geminisae were collected in the district of Donoso, Panama, in 2011.
The species is smaller than other colorful dart frogs present in the area, such as the Strawberry poison-dart frog (Oophaga pumilio) and the Vicente’s poison frog (Oophaga vicentei).
It also has a very distinctive male advertisement call.
“The call of Andinobates geminisae shows remarkable differences compared to the other species of Andinobates from Panama,” Prof Crawford and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in the journal Zootaxa (abstract in .pdf).
Because this species appears to be found in only a very small area, habitat loss and collecting for the pet trade are major threats to its existence.
“Integrative studies on Andinobates geminisae are urgently required, due to the lack of information on this newly discovered species. Data on population ecology, bioacoustic behavior, breeding biology and parental care are much needed for it,” the scientists wrote.
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Batista, A. et al. 2014. A new species of Andinobates (Amphibia:Dendrobatidae) from west central Panama. Zootaxa 3: 333-352; doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.3866.3.2
