Newfound species of wee frogs found in Mexico can fit on your fingertip
By Mindy Weisberger published about 21 hours ago
Little is known about the habits and biology of these lilliputian amphibians.
Craugastor cueyatl on a Mexican 10-peso coin, which has a diameter of 1.1 inches (28 millimeters). (Image credit: Jeffrey W. Streicher)
Six newly-described species of miniature frogs from Mexico and Guatemala are so tiny that each can fit comfortably on a human thumbnail. Two of the species are smaller than 0.7 inches (18 millimeters) long, and the tiniest of them — Craugastor candelariensis — is Mexico's smallest frog, measuring no more than 0.5 inches (13 mm) long.
The wee frogs live in moist leaf litter on forest floors and are known as direct-developing frogs, which means that they don't undergo a tadpole stage as part of their life cycle, the researchers who described the species wrote in a new study. Rather, the frogs hatch from eggs as miniature versions of their adult forms.
Hatchlings are thought to measure less than than 0.4 inches (10 mm) long, but scientists aren't certain about that because no one has ever seen these frogs hatch, said lead study author Tom Jameson, a researcher in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and a doctoral candidate in the Cambridge Climate, Life and Earth (C-CLEAR) program.
Other scientists had collected the frogs years ago and placed them in museum collections, cataloging the minuscule amphibians as undefined species in the Craugastor genus or as possibly belonging to the miniature frog species C. pygmaeus or C. hobartsmithii, the study authors reported April 4 in the journal Herpetological Monographs.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/six-tiny-frog-species-discovered-mexico