New-To-Science Poison Dart Frog Named to Honor Afro-Colombian Music

This newly discovered poison frog may represent a evolutionary step on the pathway towards developing brilliant warning coloration associated with other poison dart frogs.

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A small reddish-brown frog roughly 2/3rds of an inch long is the latest species new-to-science that has been described and named. (Credit: Juan Camilo Ríos Orjuela)

Scientists recently described and named a frog species that is new to science. This new frog lives in dry and humid tropical forests from sea level to 1800m elevation across the Pacific lowlands and foothills of the western side of the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and northern Peru ( ). Although the new frog’s range (Figure 1) includes areas of severe deforestation, it was surprisingly abundant.

Figure 1: Map of research area. The southern half of the Pacific lowlands of Colombia, part of the Chocó biogeographical region, hosts at least three species of Epipedobates. (doi:)

“We observed individuals actively moving among the grass and leaf litter, or actively calling at the edges of water bodies,” said the study’s senior author, herpetologist Rebecca Tarvin, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the , where she integrates studies of natural history with genomics and phylogenetics, especially in poison dart frogs.