Biologists from the United States and Peru have described a colorful new species of water frog from the Peruvian Andes.
The water frog Telmatobius ventriflavum. Image credit: Alessandro Catenazzi / CC-BY 4.0.
The newly-discovered species, named Telmatobius ventriflavum, belongs to Telmatobiinae (water frogs), a subfamily of frogs endemic to the Andes of South America.
The specific name ventriflavum comes from the Latin venter, meaning belly, and flavus, meaning yellow and refers to the golden yellow and orange coloration on the body.
The populations of several species of the water frog genus Telmatobius have declined dramatically over the past 30 years, and the genus is now thought to be extinct in Ecuador. These declines have been associated with the spread of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis.
Telmatobius ventriflavum was discovered in the species-poor coastal valleys of central Peru, a region well studied but apparently still hiding surprises.
“The discovery of a new species in such arid and easily accessible environments shows that much remains to be done to document amphibian diversity in the Andes,” said Dr Alessandro Catenazzi of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, who is the first author of a paper published in the journal ZooKeys.
The study detected the presence of the chytrid fungus, but the impact of chytridiomycosis on the new species is unknown.
Dr Catenazzi and his colleagues recommend disease surveillance to prevent outbreaks that might endanger the survival of this endemic species.
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Catenazzi A et al. 2015. A new species of Telmatobius (Amphibia, Anura, Telmatobiidae) from the Pacific slopes of the Andes, Peru. ZooKeys 480: 81-95; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.480.8578
