It took an extremely observant herpetologist to catch the presence of this newly-discovered species of poisonous dart frog: only 12.7 millimeters long (just half an inch!), this creature is small enough to fit on your fingernail, and lives in a very small stretch of land in Panama. Researchers may have seen the frog before but not realized that it was a separate species, according to a member of the research team that describe the new frog.
The frog was named Geminis Vargas after the wife of Marcos Ponce, one of the discoverers of the frog. Ponce and his partner, Abel Batista, thought the frog might be a distinct species as early as 2011, but they wanted to make sure that the frog was really a distinct species before they announced it.
The first specimen of the new species was collected by Samuel Valdés, the environment office director of MWH Global Inc., on Feb. 21, 2011. At the time, he did not realize that the frog might be a new species. Andrew Crawford, the author of the paper describing the frog, said that the frog bears some superficial similarities to another dart frog species, the strawberry poison dart frog (Oophaga pumilio). Both frogs share the same bright orange color.
"Based on morphological characteristics of the adult and the tadpole, I thought it might be a new species of Andinobates," said Cesar Jaramillo, a herpetologist.
"Perhaps A. geminisae had been observed previously but was confused with Oophaga," Crawford said.
Crawford ran DNA sequencing to confirm that this frog was a new species, previously unrecorded. The team entered the DNA sequencing to the Barcode of Life Data System, a public library of DNA from different animals that began in 2003. The scientists also added the frog's call to the Amphibia Web database.
There seem not to be too many of these frogs left and they inhabit a very small area, so Crawford and Ponce warn against collecting the frogs as pets in their paper. The frogs might be threatened by human activity or any habitat loss. The authors are currently working with a group to discuss special measures of conservation for the frog.
In a sweet touch, Marcos Ponce added a dedication to his wife in the team's paper describing the frog, saying that he was naming the frog after her "for her unconditional support of his studies of Panamanian herpetology."
