for National Geographic News
An ecological treasure trove of brightly colored and diverse new frog species has been discovered on the tea-plantation-covered island of Sri Lanka. The discovery of more than a hundred new rain-forest species makes the country a new center of frog diversity and increases the urgency for protecting what little forest it retains.
The new finding increases the island's previously known tree frog diversity more than fivefold to over 100 species. Sri Lanka's status as an amphibian biodiversity hotspot now challenges that of other tropical islands, including Borneo, Madagascar, and New Guinea which are ten times or more as large, yet have similar numbers of frog species.
"The simultaneous discovery of more than 100 species is…astonishing news," said David Skelly of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in New Haven, Connecticut. "Sri Lanka is relatively small and relatively well known compared to much of the tropics," he said. The discovery "is testimony to how little we know about the distribution of biodiversity."
Five of the new species are tree frogs that lay eggs in homespun foam baskets suspended above water—from whence the tadpoles take their first dip. The remainder are all species that produce young on the forest floor in robust eggs. These direct-developing young avoid being tadpoles and emerge as fully fledged, if tiny, versions of their parents.
The new species have a variety of remarkable body forms, said Christopher J. Schneider, a biologist at Boston University. These species run the gamut from tiny leaf-litter dwellers to large tree-living types. Some live on rocks and have leg fringes and markings that help disguise them as clumps of moss, he said.
Global Free Fall
The discovery is good news considering the recently documented declines in amphibian numbers worldwide. "The discovery of these species is just an indication that we are losing some of the world's most important resources before we even know what those resources really are," said John W. Wilkinson, International Coordinator for the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.
Around 5,000 amphibian species, including frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders are thought to exist today. These often semi-aquatic animals live in environments ranging from wetlands and forests to savannas and deserts.
Since the 1950s many species of amphibians have experienced plummeting numbers associated with habitat loss and other adverse human activities. However, since the late 1980s biologists began reporting an escalation in these declines worldwide—often with no clear cause, and even severely affecting species in otherwise pristine habitats such as national parks and nature reserves.
Scientists have been at a loss to find a single factor responsible for the declines that have caused the extinction of many species. Possible causes include pollutants such as pesticides, diseases such as fungal infections, climate change, and more ultraviolet radiation due to thinning ozone layers.
Declining amphibian populations are a concern, said Wilkinson, because they indicate general environmental degradation—with implications for the health of other animals, humans included—and because amphibian species, like vanishing rain-forest plants, are a potential source of new drugs. "Many frogs produce chemicals [and poisons through their skin] which could have huge applications in healthcare and medical treatment," he said.
Specimens of the newly discovered species were first collected in 1993 when Rohan Pethiyagoda, founder of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Heritage Trust based in Columbo, arranged to survey animal biodiversity in the nation's surviving rain-forest patches.
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