Researchers found world’s smallest vertebrate, a tiny frog

Researchers found world’s smallest vertebrate, a tiny frog

Researchers have found a tiny frog in Papua New Guinea what they claim is the smallest vertebrate of the world. The discovery of the frog was published in the journal PLoS One and the
researchers proclaimed the frog, Paedophryne amanuensis, as the world’s smallest spinal animal.

The Paedophryne amanuensis adult frogs are about three-tenths of an inch long in size. To a naked eye, they are a millimetre or so smaller than the smallest carp found on the Indonesian
island of Sumatra. Due to the small size of the frog, Christopher Austin, herpetologist and environmental biologist in the Louisiana State University, had to enlarge close-up photos to describe them.

Austin discovered these tiny frogs in August 2009 during his trip to Papua New Guinea in order to study the extreme diversity of the wildlife on the island.

A scientist and president-elect of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists at the University of Arkansas, Steven J. Beaupre, stated that sizes of male and female vertebrates
are very different in many species so it is reasonable that the world’s smallest vertebrate may end up being either the males or the females of some specific fish or amphibian species and the frogs are a significant discovery.

He wrote in his email, "The discovery of two new frog species comes as great news against the background of more prevalent accounts of tropical amphibian extinction.”

He further said that knowing about such tiny creatures and their ecology helps scientists better understand the advantages and disadvantages of extreme small size and how such extremes
evolve. Fundamentally, these tiny vertebrates provide a window on the principles that constrain animal design.

According to Austin, these frogs hatch out as hoppers rather than tadpoles and live on the ground. This is why their existence contradicts the hypothesis that evolution at large and small
extremes is linked to life in water.

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Jan 25 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry