Sometimes called the saddleback toad. these newly discovered frogs are members of the family Brachycephalidae, order Anura. Traditionally, there is one genus, Brachycephalus. These frogs are among the world’s smallest terrestrial invertebrates.
Can you imagine a frog no bigger than a man’s thumbnail? Scientists say the adults get no larger than one centimeter in length. That is 0.40 inches. The little frog’s diminutive size gives it unique differences in its body structure, too. These creatures have only three toes on each foot, instead of five, and two fingers on each hand, instead of four, as do most frogs.
Many members of Brachycephalus are brightly colored, some bright red, many lemon yellow, and various colors in between. The bright colors act as a warning to predators, saying “don’t eat me.” Their skin has a highly potent neurotoxin know as tetrodotoxin.
Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest is an endangered habitat
Researchers say the frogs are highly endemic, being restricted to the Atlantic Rainforest in one or only a few close-by mountain tops. This makes them especially vulnerable to extinction due to shifts in the position of the cloud forests because of climate change.
This extreme isolation and adaptation to a very specific habitat actually prevents these frogs from migrating across valleys to other areas of the forest, promoting the formation of new species. In this unique environment, the Brachycephalus frogs are active during the day, living in the leaf litter of the forest floor.
On the forest floor, they breed, with the eggs undergoing direct development, hatching into tiny miniature frogs. There is no tadpole stage involved, instead, the eggs are laid on the ground and covered in soil to protect them from the heat and predators.
The Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil is not only beautiful but is home to one of the most bio-diverse places on Earth. Sadly, its immense variety of flora and fauna is threatened, not only from habitat loss, the result of deforestation, but from climate change.
Marcio Pie, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, who led the project said, “Although getting to many of the field sites is exhausting, there was always the feeling of anticipation and curiosity about what new species could look like.”
Teammate Luiz Ribeiro, a research associate to the Mater Natura Institute for Environmental Studies, says the research team is already looking forward to doing further studies. “This is only the beginning, especially given the fact that we have already found additional species that we are in the process of formally describing.”
