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New Frog Species Found In NYC
interval1066 writes "Ars Technica reports that a paper by biologists Catherine E. Newmana, Jeremy A. Feinbergb, Leslie J. Risslerc, Joanna Burgerb, and H. Bradley Shaffer, in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (abstract of paywalled article), describes a new subspecies of leopard frog has been found living exclusively in New York City. The researchers describe in the paper that the new frog has a distinctive croak, quite different from the two existing species of leopard frogs on the East Coast. The new frog is also stand-offish and tends to impotently honk its horn when stuck in traffic."
Yes yes but how does it taste?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
We're better tear down a few buildings to protect it's habitat! This is important!
So do they live in sewers and learn ninjitsu from rats?
Oh wait. Wrong amphibians...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sounds a bit like it's saying "It's not easy being green"
Are from Long Island.
It could be that 7 million of them did notice it but none of them knew enough about frogs to know it was an unknown species.
You obviously haven't been to New York or you would know a true New Yorker doesn't notice anything as they whip by at 40 mph. The only thing that slightly slows a New Yorker is the crowd of tourists waiting on the corner to cross.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The only whipping by a New Yorker can do at 40MPH is in a taxi - not too many with cars, you know. You are thinking of the bridge and tunnel crew.
Though it is true that only tourists wait on the corners - the rest of us jaywalk or cross as soon as it is "clear".
These frogs - I have no idea where they live. Wildlife is so scarce that we notice ants. The only things that you see on Manhattan are pigeons, rats, mice, and hawks. I don't think I was ever bitten by a mosquito, though we do have bedbugs now. And roaches - god are there roaches. You only need one nasty neighbor to harbor those things and the whole building gets infested. Yay for poison. Central park has a few songbirds, but mostly starlings and sparrows - Brooklyn has geese in Prospect Park. You see seagulls and stuff in the shore areas or wherever there is garbage (ahem, Staten Island, ahem). I see people fishing (!!!) occasionally, which is just nuts. This frog was found in the Bronx, Staten Island, and in New Jersey - with the population centered around Yankee Stadium (!!!) so Manhattan isn't really relevant anyway.
Actually, I should stop saying "we" since I don't live there anymore.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Have gnu, will travel.
Everyone should hop on over and read it.
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The researchers describe in the paper that the new frog has a distinctive croak, quite different from the two existing species of leopard frogs on the East Coast.
Does it say "cruak" instead of "croak?" Perhaps the species originated elsewhere in New York...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
er..ah..Hypnofrog. Doesn't have the same ring.
I'm no biologist, but isn't this almost statistically certain to be happening all over?
I recall that in the London subway, evolutionary variation into distinct species was observed in insects (?) in different tube lines.
Hell, my house is over 100 yrs old, and I suspect that we probably have at least 3 identifiable strains of otherwise-common animals:
- house spiders: the ones on the living levels of the house are much more spindly, with darker colors that match our woodwork more closely. They are much calmer, staying still when disturbed. Their webs tend to be very fine and delicate.
- basement spiders: our cellar hosts a healthy population of spiders, roughly similar in form to the house spiders, but much paler, more aggressive, weaving thicker webs.
- houseflies: in our attic (not finished until we moved in, in 1992) there is a particularly massive type of housefly. Not a bottlefly, it is as far as I can see simply a gigantic version of a typical housefly, roughly 2x the size in each dimension (ie about the size of a large bluebottle fly). It's our speculation that they are seriously inbred and stupid - they are very slow-reacting, flying slow in straight lines, our dog bites them out of the air....and he's not too quick either. In fact, last summer we noticed one of these flies was killed by a closing door.
It's more a matter of at what point a 'drift' in some subgroup is significant enough to say "this is a new species" than "OMG, look, totally new frog here!", no?
-Styopa