BRENT: Seven new species of tiny frog have been discovered on seven different mountains in south-eastern Brazil.
The cool “cloud forests” of this region have a unique climate, separated by warmer valleys that isolate the peaks like islands.
That isolation has produced 21 known species of Brachycephalus frog – and the new arrivals push that count to 28.
They are all less than 1cm long and many have colourful, poisonous skin to help them avoid becoming tiny meals.
The newly discovered species, reported in the open-access journal PeerJ, are the fruit of five years of expeditions into the wilderness.
Marcio Pie, a professor at the Federal University of Parana in nearby Curitiba, said he had climbed more mountains than he can remember.
“It’s really exhausting,” he told the BBC. “The mountains are not that high – most of them are 1,000m to 1,500m – it’s just that the trails are not particularly well marked.”
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