Eleven New Frog Species Discovered in Ecuador

By Ndimuh B. Shancho

A PhD student at the University of British Columbia, Nadia Paez, and a Catholic University’s Professor, Santiago Ron, have discovered eleven new species of the frog in the South American country, Ecuador.

A paper containing this exciting discovery described by many as  one of the largest amphibians discoveries in recent times, was published lately  in the ZooKeys journal

The newly-discovered species include  Pristimantis atillo, P. chomskyi, P. gloria, P. jimenezi, P. lutzae, P. multicolor, P. nangaritza, P. teslai, P. torresi, P. totoroi, and P. verrucolatus.

Though a Ph.D. student in the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, this discovery is a fallout of Nadia Paez undergraduate thesis at the Pontifical Catholic where she was supervised by Professor Santiago Ron.

Unfortunately, most of the newly described frog species are listed as either Data Deficient or Threatened with extinction, according to the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Worse still, their habitats are being destroyed by human activities, especially cattle-raising, agriculture, and mining.