Biologists from Czech Republic, the United States and Peru have described a new species of the true toad genus Rhinella.
Rhinella yunga, adult female. Image credit: Jiří Moravec.
The new species, named Rhinella yunga, belongs to Bufonidae – a large toad family composed of more than 30 genera.
These toads have a warty, robust body and a pair of large poison parotoid glands on the back of their heads.
The poison is excreted by the toads when stressed as a protective mechanism. Some toads are more toxic than others.
Males also possess a special organ, which after removing of testes becomes an active ovary and the toad, in effect, becomes female.
Like many other Bufonidae toads, Rhinella yunga has a cryptic body coloration resembling the decaying leaves in the forest floor, which is in combination with expanded cranial crests and bony protrusions cleverly securing perfect camouflage.
Rhinella yunga, adult male. Image credit: Jiří Moravec.
The different colors and shapes within the same species group however make the traditional morphological methods of taxonomic research hard to use to identify the real species diversity within the family.
Nevertheless, Rhinela yunga is distinct from all related species in absence of a tympanic membrane, a round membranous part of hearing organ being normally visible on both sides of a toad’s head.
“It appears that large number of still unnamed cryptic species remains hidden under some nominal species of the Rhinella margaritifera species group,” said Dr Jiří Moravec of the National Museum Prague, Czech Republic, who is the lead author of the paper published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
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Moravec J et al. 2014. A new species of the Rhinella margaritifera species group (Anura, Bufonidae) from the montane forest of the Selva Central, Peru. ZooKeys 371: 35-56; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.371.6580
