#pristimantis

[herpsandbirds]

La Loma Robber Frog (Pristimantis caryophyllaceus), mother guarding eggs, family Strabomantidae, Costa Rica

Mothers lay eggs on leaves and then brood them under their bodies. The offspring go through the tadpole stage in the egg, and then hatch out as froglets. * This is possible, because their rain forest habitats are so humid, and wet.

photograph by Kevin Venegas

[markscherz]

Hello Dr. Mark!

What is the 71st best frog?

By probability alone, it's almost certainly a Pristimantis species. There are 603 species in that genus, i.e. 7.9% of all frogs are Pristimantis species, i.e. one in every 13 species is a Pristimantis. So, arbitrarily, I'm gonna go with Pristimantis erythros, because… damn

[src]

[birdblues]

Pygmy Rain Frog

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Here's one of two female frogs found during a research expedition in 2022 and later identified as Pristimantis ruidus. It is the first time that this species has been photographed alive.

Photograph by Jaime Culebras

[amnhnyc]

Jiminy cricket! Have you ever heard of the Pinocchio rainfrog (Pristimantis appendiculatus)? This amphibian can be found in parts of South America including Colombia and Ecuador, where it inhabits mountainous cloud forests. First described to science in 1894, new research wasn't published about the Pinocchio rainfrog until the 1970s. This species is threatened by habitat loss and pollution.

Photo: andypearce, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[fatehbaz]

Noam Chomsky frog. Resistance-against-mining-corporation frog. J.R.R. Tolkien frog.

Always something fun going on with newly-recorded frog species in the tropical Andes.

Especially within the political borders of Ecuador and Colombia, the tropical Andes are the site of the highest local biodiversity of mammals, birds, amphibians, and plants on the planet.

For example, Colombia is home to over 730 unique species of frogs and is home to 20% of all bird species on the planet.

Saw the news, from January 2023, about the newly-described “Tolkien frog”.

From the paper:

And just a year prior, in 2022, there was the “resistance frog.”

The official common name: “rana cohete resistencia de Intag” or, roughly, “Intag’s resistance frog.”

This creature, an endemic species, lives in forest where the local Intag community/communities have for the past 30 years consistently fought against corporate mining company attempts to build copper mining infrastructure, hence the frog’s name which honors this tradition of resistance.

And then in 2019, there were a whole bunch of newly-described rain frog species also detected in Ecuador.

In this published article introducing the frogs, the researchers note the intense and “extraordinary” biodiversity even within the same species.

For example, although 11 frog species were newly described, here’s a look at the color/pattern diversity within just one single species, Pristimantis multicolor.

Another of the new species was named Pristimantis chomskyi, after Noam Chomsky:

[n0esnadie]

Una linda y hermosa Pristimantis spp. Aff uranobates

[saltminerising]

i just learned about the Pinocchio rainfrog (Pristimantis appendiculatus) today, and my first thought was "they made a ridgeback dragon into a frog"

[tentacledsnakelover]

An Idea for an Amphibia x The Owl House crossover

This is an idea I’ve had cooking up for a while, but now I want to get it out. I’ve so many incredible stories and artworks about the characters of these shows coming together, but if by some miracle, we actually got something canon, this is what I would want to see:

This, is my idea for the main antagonist of a crossover between these two shows: Calamites Pristimantis

Named for two different genera of species:

Calamites, referring to not just an extinct genus of plants known as horsetails, but also an ancient connection to the Calamity Box

Pristimantis, referring to a large genus of frogs, including one in particular, in which Calamites is named for: P. mutabilis, a shapeshifting frog

Calamites is part of Amphibia’s early past, and was a good friend with Valeriana. In fact, they were among the founding members of the order that dedicated themselves to studying the ancient stones. But while Valeriana and the others decided unifying the warring Amphibians under a civilization based on conquering, Calamites believed that the real problem was the idea of civilization itself.

Very fond of nature, and disgusted by the atrocities Amphibians fought over for power, Calamites believed societies were like a cancer, starting out small, but eventually growing malignant, and spreading and destroying everything. The Leviathan royal family was destroying other worlds to continue what he saw as an unnecessary and exorbitant lifestyle. Amphibians were perfectly fine when they were just primitive and living in balance with nature, but now they were taking things too far.

P. mutabilis is a frog that can shapeshift, changing the texture of its skin. Calamites’ most defining ability was based off this. He can shapeshift. Like Valeriana, he knows powerful magic, and by touching anyone, can take on their appearance and abilities. He used his arsenal of forms of Amphibia’s fauna to try and destroy all civilizations, across all worlds, but Valeriana used her magic to entomb him, though he took her arm in the process. Valeriana decided to keep her arm gone, and to name the box “Calamites’ Box”, which later became “Calamity Box” as a reminder of this.

In the present, Calamites would escape, and angered by Valeriana’s ‘betrayal’, as well as seeing other atrocities during his entombment, such as Andrias destroying the environment to conquer Earth, and Belos’ religiously motivated genocide against the Boiling Isles, Calamites desires to finish what he started.

Calamites saw that Belos allied himself with the Collector, slowly learning the star child’s magic to create a spell that would drain all magic. This inspires Calamites to find the Collector, take on their god-like powers, and revert all sapient beings in the multiverse to a primitive stage, thus ending the need for civilization.

I think shape-shifting is an extremely underrated power. If used right, you can take on any ability, from flight to venom, or even Calamity powers.

[critter-of-the-day]

13th of September 2024: South American Leopard Rain Frog

A quick Frog Friday, today looking at Pristimantis pardalinus, who doesn’t have a recorded common name [1], but I will call the South American Leopard Rain Frog, as their genus are called South American Rain Frogs [2] and their species name derives from a diminutive for pardos, which is Greek for leopard, referring to the dark blotches on their yellow backs [3].

As one may have guessed by the South American part of the name, they’re from South America, specifically Peru. For a while they had only ever been found near the village of Huasihuasi in the Andes in Central Peru. Since then, they’ve also been found in two further localities [4], however their range remains very small [5].

This discovery did cause them to be bumped up from Critically Endangered to Endangered by the IUCN. One concern for them in particular is their reliance on bromeliads, specifically those of the genus Tillandsia, as human intervention may cause patchy distribution of those flowers, dividing the population of the South American Leopard Rain Frog [5], who have thus far been exclusively found there [3], though this may also be that follow-up studies specifically looked for them there [4].

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Image] 

[wikimediauncommons]

file: Pristimantis nebulosus (10.3897-zse.98.84963) Figure 1.jpg

[herpsandbirds]

Ornate Rain Frog (Pristimantis tribulosus), family Strabomantidae, only known from a site in the eastern slope of the Cordillera Central, Colombia.

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

Photograph by Jorge H. López Le-geme

[markscherz]

What is your opinion on all those frog species within Pristimantis and do you think you could potentially list them off like Yakko's World?

At 608 species, there are too many Pristimantis species, and I honestly have no idea how people continue to describe new ones when you have so many congeners to compare to, many of which have never been sequenced. I wonder if they struggle with the same problems that are generated in insect groups, where the same species is described multiple times from different countries because people fail to remember that animals don't give a damn about national borders, and then don't do their homework on the fauna of their neighbours to appropriately rule out species from there as potentially the same.

I could maybe do a Yakko's World/Tom Lehrer's Elements Song version of the genera Stumpffia and Boophis, but I don't really know Pristimantis at all, so no, definitely couldn't list them off.

[batgodofredo]

Pristimantis ornatissimus, Ecuador.

[frogs-from-bogs]

Pristimantis chloronotus by Andreas Kay

[share-my-happiness]

アンデス山脈で発見された新種のカエル、レッド・ツェッペリンにちなんだ名前が付けられる.

https://amass.jp/148150/