New species of frog from the Neotropics carries its heart on its skin.
The new amphibian is described by a team of scientists led by Dr. Juan M. Guayasamin, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Additionally, the species has a characteristic long call.
The new frog is named Hyalinobatrachium yaku, where the species name (yaku) translates to ‘water’ in the local language Kichwa.
The reproductive behaviour is also quite unusual in this species.
Having identified individuals of the new species at three localities, the researchers note some behavioural differences between the populations.
Two of them, spotted in the riverine vegetation of an intact forest in Kallana, have been calling from the underside of leaves a few metres above slow-flowing, relatively narrow and shallow streams.
However, at the third locality – a disturbed secondary forest in San José de Payamino – the studied frogs have been perching on leaves of small shrubs, ferns, and grasses some 30 to 150 cm above the ground.
The uncertainty about its distributional range comes from a number of reasons.
Then, even if specimens of the species have been previously collected, they would be almost impossible to identify from museum collection, as many of the characteristic traits, such as the dark green marks, are getting lost after preservation.