The major threat to these amphibians in the Western Ghats of India is caused by the alteration of natural habitats by an ever-increasing human population, resulting in large areas being converted for settlement and agricultural use. In 2015, tadpoles of the species were discovered to be traditionally consumed by tribal communities. Unlike many other burrowing species of frogs that emerge and feed above the ground, this species has been found to forage underground, feeding mainly on termites using its tongue and a special buccal groove. Around 3000 eggs are laid in a rock pool and the tadpoles metamorphose after around 100 days. They mount females and grip them (amplexus) along the vertebral column. Males emerge to call beside temporary rainwater streams. With few field scientists out in the field during the rainy season, the species was discovered and studied only in recent times. The frog spends most of its life underground and surfaces only during the monsoon, for a period of two weeks, for mating. The frogs may switch to headfirst burrowing due to their wedge-shaped skull and other shaped limbs. Some other burrowing frogs ( Myobatrachus gouldii and Arenophyrne rotunda ) are known to do this, but these frogs have also been observed to call from the surface, while N. Males of this species exhibit the unique behavior of calling from under a thin layer of soil. Its vocalization is a drawn-out harsh call that sounds similar to a chicken clucking. Some of these fishes co-occur with Nasikabatrachus tadpoles in the hill streams. Suckers are also present in rheophilic fishes of genera such as Glyptothorax, Travancoria, Homaloptera, and Bhavania, adaptations that are the result of convergent evolution. Narayan Rao as having oral suckers that allowed them to live in torrential streams. Tadpoles of the species had been described in 1917 by Nelson Annandale and C. The specimen with which the species was originally described was 7.0 cm (2.8 inches) long from the tip of the snout to the vent. Males are about a third of the length of females. Adults are typically dark purplish-grey in color. sahyadrensis has a small head and an unusual pointed snout. Its arms and legs splay out in the standard anuran body form. Their flattened body assists them to cling to submerged rocks and boulders which essentially helps them fight strong currents, allowing them to remain near stream banks where they typically reside. “It represents a deep branch in the evolutionary tree of frogs, and as such merits the establishment of a new family.The body of Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis appears robust and bloated and is relatively rounded compared to other more dorsoventrally flattened frogs. “It is not just a new species,” reported Franky Bossuyt, an evolutionary biologist at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. Announced in Nature, this new species has been dubbed Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, from the Sanskrit word for nose (nasika) batrachus, meaning frog and Sahyadri, the name for the hills along the western Indian coast that are also called the Western Ghats. After all, it’s fun to discover you are more “real” than previously believed.ĭiscovered in the Western Ghats Mountains of India, ancestors of this squatty frog walked with dinosaurs. But still, Horned Frogs everywhere are to be excused for chuckling. Of course, our brand isn’t really a frog, it’s a lizard - phyronsoma cornutum, to be precise. But the announcement of the thought-to-be-extinct, and distinctly purple frog brought smiles to the faces of myriad TCU-ers, who have long known about the existence of Purple Frogs. The discovery in October of a new species of frog in a remote corner of mountainous India flooded the news wires with scientific excitement.
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