- Scientists have discovered six new species of peeping frog in the western Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Michoacán.
- All six frogs belong to the genus Eleutherodactylus and were described in the journal Mesoamerican Herpetology last month. According to the authors of the article describing the new species, Eleutherodactylus frogs “are among the most diverse and taxonomically challenging groups of amphibians in the New World.”
- The genus Eleutherodactylus consists of five subgenera, four of which are native solely to the West Indies and are relatively well-studied. The six newly discovered frogs belong to the fifth subgenus, Syrrhophus, a group that has received less attention from scientists.
Scientists have discovered six new species of peeping frog in the western Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Michoacán.
All six frogs belong to the genus Eleutherodactylus and were described in the journal Mesoamerican Herpetology last month. According to the authors of the article describing the new species, Eleutherodactylus frogs “are among the most diverse and taxonomically challenging groups of amphibians in the New World.”
The genus Eleutherodactylus consists of five subgenera, four of which are native solely to the West Indies and are relatively well-studied. The six newly discovered frogs belong to the fifth subgenus, Syrrhophus, a group that has received less attention from scientists. Frogs belonging to Syrrhophus can be found in Cuba and continental North America, where their ranges extend from Texas to central Guatemala. They are most species-rich in Mexico.
All species of Eleutherodactylus reproduce via direct development, meaning their eggs hatch small frogs rather than tadpoles. “Recent large-scale taxonomic works have redefined our understanding of New World direct-developing frogs,” a team of scientists led by Christoph Grünwald of the NGO Biodiversa and research group HERP.MX write in Mesoamerican Herpetology. But the last review of Syrrhophus was done in 1970 and species-level taxonomic studies, in particular, are lacking.
Grünwald and team set out to fill that gap in our knowledge of Syrrhophus frogs. They write that “Since 2003, a renewed interest in this group led us to sample all of the currently recognized species of Syrrhophus in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala.” Their work already yielded descriptions of two new species of Eleutherodactylus from western Mexico in 2015 and two more species from Cuba in 2017.
Here are all six of the new Syrrhophus species discovered by Grünwald and team:
The Colima Peeping Frog (Eleutherodactylus colimotl) was found in the coastal region of the state of Colima and neighboring Michoacán, where it inhabits low elevation foothills and tropical deciduous forests. “This species’ call is among the loudest of the species we’ve encountered, and given the right circumstances can be heard from nearly a kilometer away,” Grünwald and team note in a statement on the HERP.MX website.
Erendira’s Trilling Frog (Eleutherodactylus erendirae) is the smallest of all known Syrrhophus species. The frog was named after Princess Eréndira, a warrior princess of the P’urhépecha people of west-central México who led a war against the Spanish after the conquest of the Aztecs. “Eleutherodactylus erendirae appears to be endemic to the heartland of the P’urhépecha people, and the name honors their legendary princess,” the scientists write.
Flores’ Peeping Frog (Eleutherodactylus floresvillelai) was found in the Sierra de Mil Cumbres of east-central Michoacán state and named after Dr. Oscar Flores-Villela, a renowned Mexican herpetologist.
The Jalisco Trilling Frog (Eleutherodactylus jaliscoensis) tends to be found in oak trees and “is restricted to the few remaining patches of wet forest in western Jalisco” — a “megadiverse” state and the species’ namesake, according to Grünwald and his colleagues.
Nieto’s Trilling Frog (Eleutherodactylus nietoi) was found in the Sierra Coalcomán of western Michoacán in a variety of habits, from tropical decidious forest-oak woodland ecotone to humid-pine oak forests. The species was named after Adrian Nieto-Montes de Oca, a Mexican herpetologist and co-curator of the herpetological collection at Museo de Zoólogia, Facultad de Ciencias at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MZFC). “Adrian’s collaboration facilitating access to material at MZFC has been crucial to our study of Syrrhophus,” Grünwald and team write.
The Sierra Manantlán Trilling Frog (Eleutherodactylus manantlanensis) is a tiny species endemic to the Sierra Manantlán, an outlier mountain range of the Sierra Madre del Sur that stretches across southwestern Jalisco and northern Colima. In fact, the species was found only in the high-elevation oak forests of one limestone mountain known as Cerro Grande, though the scientists also searched nearby mountains with similar habitat to no avail.
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