Eleven new species of rain frog discovered
- Published
Not one, not two, but ELEVEN new species of frog have been discovered in the Andes rainforest.
The discovery was made in the South American country of Ecuador.
It is one of the largest discoveries of amphibians in recent times with many studies only finding between one and five new species at a time.
What's more, is that discoveries on this scale are usually was made by big teams of senior scientists, but this was the work of Ph.D student Nadia Paez from the University of British Columbia in Canada.
These frogs pictured are all varieties of the newly discovered multicoloured rain frogs.
Unfortunately, the newly described frog species are being classed as either "Data Deficient" (which means scientists do not have enough information about them) or "threatened with extinction".
To make matters worse, their habitats are being destroyed by human activities, especially cattle raising, agriculture, and mining.
Some of the frogs were either named after scientists, who have made significant contributions in their fields, or given the names of the places they were discovered, in order to highlight places of conservation priority.
Pristimantis Chomsky was named after Noam Chomsky - a famous linguist.
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