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Herpetologists have discovered a new frog species in the tropical forests of Papua New Guinea which they say is smallest vertebrate ever found. The previously unknown creature, speckled in red and black, measures just 7.7 mm in length from nose to butt. It is so small that end to end more than two would fit on a dime.
This miniature frog, now dubbed Paedophryne amanuensis, has taken over the title of smallest vertebrate — an animal with a backbone — which was owned by an acidic swamp-dwelling fish from Indonesia called Paedocypris progenetica. Though the frog was discovered in 2009, the researchers have now described their finding in the journal PLoS One. "We don’t really know what they eat, we know very little about their ecology," said Austin. "They are probably eating very, very small invertebrates that occupy the leaf litter, like mites," Austin was quoted as saying by LiveScience. The tiny frog is a member of a group of related frogs, known as a genus. By studying genetic data of these and other miniature frogs from other groups, the team concluded that miniaturisation has evolved independently at least 11 times. "It isn’t this one-off oddity. It’s actually a more generalised phenomenon that we see across all frogs," Austin said. Almost all other diminutive frogs that are less than 0.5 inches long occupy a similar habitat hidden in the perennially moist leaves on tropical forest floors, the team said. — PTI
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Prof Chris Austin of
Louisiana State University and his colleagues, who discovered the frog
on a three-month field trip to the Pacific island, said these
creatures make their habitats on fallen leaves on the floor of
tropical rain forests.