Found two species of glass frog that see through internal organs

Less than 16 kilometers from Ecuador’s capital Quito, the steep slopes of the Andes are one of the most biologically diverse, but also most vulnerable, tropical regions in the world.

At the foot of the Andes there is a valley. The river that flows through it, known as the Guayllabamba, is at the center of the extraordinary story of two newly identified species of glass frogs.

One of them, Hyalinobatrachium mashpi, lives south of the river in Mashpi and Tayra Nature Reserve, two adjacent private tropical oases measuring 2,510 hectares. The second species, the noun Hyalinobatrachium, lives on the northern slopes of a valley in the Toisan Mountains, a population of steep mountains isolated from the main Andean belt, 20 km from where the first species was found.

These two creatures have much in common. They exist at the same altitude, under the same temperature and humidity conditions. Both measure 1.9 to 2.1 centimeters from snout to cloaca (a standard measure of amphibian length).

Their bodies are also nearly identical to the naked eye, with a green back dotted with black dots arranged around yellow spots, and a completely transparent abdomen, exposing the heart, liver, and digestive system, and egg sac (in females). ).

“At first, we thought they were the same species, but when we analyzed the DNA more closely, we were surprised to see such a large genetic difference,” study lead author Juan Manuel Guayasamin, an evolutionary studies biologist at the University of San Francisco de Quito, said.

Currently, only 156 species of glass frogs are known in the world, mainly living in the northern Andes and Central America, with 90% of them having been sequenced. The nouns H. mashpi and H. differ almost 5% genetically, a large gap for similar amphibians.

Doan Duong (Based on National Geographic)

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