Over 100 Frog Species Discovered in Sri Lanka

randomErr writes "An ecological treasure trove of brightly colored and diverse new frog species has been discovered on the tea-plantation-covered island of Sri Lanka. The discovery of more than a hundred new rain-forest species makes the country a new center of frog diversity and increases the urgency for protecting what little forest it retains."

Comments

Are any of them this one?

[mhesseltine]

The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka

Thank you Trey and Matt.

Nuclear?

[littlerubberfeet]

In all suriousness, the French used to do nuclear testing near Sri-Lanka. COuld these be corrupted genes? If not, where can I be a tree hugger and send money to?

Ambiguous Title.

[Gaijin42]

The discovery of more than a hundred new rain-forest species...

The new finding increases the island's previously known tree frog diversity more than fivefold to over 100 species.

So did they find 100 species, or did they find a few more, bringing the Total to 100. They found at least five, because they talk about some later down, but shoddy reporting...

Also, what exactly makes a species? Just because they look different doesn't mean they are a different species. White people look alot different from black people. Same species. Did they do DNA comparisons? How different is different?

This reminds me of the Darwin thing with the birds on the island that gave him the idea of evolution. Most scientists say, if the birds in question weren't so "holy" because of darwin, they wouldn't be classified as different spiecies at all, because the differences are so minor.

Re:Ambiguous Title.

[belgin]

Hmm... Mules have been around for three thousand or so years. People were breeding jacks with mares well before the rise of the Roman Republic. The reason is that a horse will literally work itself to death if you keep encouraging it. A donkey frequently won't do any work at all if it can get away with it. A mule will work until it reaches its limits and then stops. If it will harm the mule to keep working, it typically won't go one step farther. Mules also have most of the strength of horses and much of the sure-footedness of donkeys.

The term mule is used by biologists to indicate any typically sterile cross-species offspring. This is because scientists named this sort of breeding after the classic horse / donkey pair. IIRC, donkeys or ponys can also have mule offspring with zebras.

A rare few mules were able to breed with donkeys, horses or other mules, but it is in the less than 1% category, IIRC.

If lions and tigers were discovered today, they would possibly be considered one species, as Ligers and Tigons are fully interbreedable with either parent species.

For another animal "species" people seem vaguely aware of, oxen are castrated bulls. The difference is that an ox is castrated at a certain point in cattle puberty that casuses it to become immensely muscular due to an excess of testosterone and similar hormones.

In addition...

[nytes]

Discovered in one corner of the plantation were hundreds of used highlighter pens.

Twisted article.

[Perdo]

the real story:

Evaluating Sri Lanka's amphibian diversity

The national geographic article is fluffy trash drawing conclusions that the scientist involved did not come to.

"We are destroying enviroment before we even know what we are destroying so give us money so we can save the enviroment."

Pethiyagoda hypothosizes the exact opposite. That the destruction of corridors of rainforest created islands of rainforest where the frogs species differentiated. The dry land acted like a natural barrier would.

So, destroy the rainforest but do it in strips so we can artificially create new species to replace the ones we loose in the destruction of the rainforest.

Frogs still barometers of environmental health?

[lute3]

The film 'Red Planet' brings that famous frog phrase to mind..

Would this diversity indicate...
1) rapid adaption was necessary in an environment that was becoming more harsh at human hands?
2) the frogs are flourishing? Is the environment's supposed toxicity is not hampering frogs in nearly profound ways as previously speculated?
3) there was a miscount in the first place? This is Sri Lanka. Might it have much less biological study than the African Savannah, the Australian Outback, or even the Brazilian rain forest?