An international team of researchers has discovered in the Amazon a species of “zombie frog” with mottled orange skin that lives underground and only comes to the surface when it rains.
The species, which has been identified as ‘ Synapturanus zombie sp’, belongs to the genus Synapturanus and was discovered in French Guiana and northern Brazil. Regarding the designation of ‘zombie frog’, it is not that it is an undead amphibian , but that “actually, we chose this name because the researchers are the ones who look like zombies when they extract the frogs from the ground”, says the herpetologist German amphibian and reptile expert, Raffael Ernst.
These animals are usually active at night and make species-specific sounds.
“The sounds of male frogs can only be heard after or during heavy rains,” explains Ernst, co-author of the study on the discovery that has been published in the journal Zoologischer Anzeiger.
“Until now little scientific attention has been paid to this genus”, among other things, because its “habitats are difficult to access and its distribution areas are very limited. In addition, their sounds are quite difficult to differentiate ”, since the animals hide underground.
The experts ended up identifying three different species , all of the same genus, called Synapturanus . The amphibians were found in the so-called Guiana Shield, which encompasses areas of tropical rainforest in Guyana, French Guiana and Brazil.
“We assume that there are six times more Synapturanus species than we have described so far. Therefore, much work remains to be done, especially since we still cannot conclusively assess the risk status of the species due to the complex data situation ”, concluded the expert.
Referencia: Antoine Fouquet et al, Comparative osteology of the fossorial frogs of the genus Synapturanus (Anura, Microhylidae) with the description of three new species from the Eastern Guiana Shield, Zoologischer Anzeiger (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jcz.2021.05.003
