Four new species of frog discovered in Mozambique

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Four new species of frog discovered in Mozambique

7:58 CAT | 27 May 2016

Lusa

Four new species of frog have been found in Mozambique, Lúrio University biologist Harith Farooq, who discovered of one of the new species, has told Lusa.

The findings of the international team of scientists responsible were published in the journal of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution in March and report the discovery of four new species of amphibians in the mountain ranges of central and northern Mozambique.

One of the species was discovered in Cabo Delgado’s Taratibu conservation area by Farooq, who is director of the School of Natural Sciences at Lúrio University in Pemba, northern Mozambique, and a co-author of the study. He is confident of finding more new species.

Describing a “small frog that lives in vegetation and ponds located on the mountains’ rocky slopes,” the biologist told Lusa: “DNA molecular analysis conducted at the University of Basel in Switzerland confirmed that this is a new species.”

The next step in these cases, explains Farooq, is to describe the species, which belongs to the genus Nothophryne, and assign it a name, which in the case of the discovery made by a professor at Lúrio University, could well be Nothophryne uniluriensis.

The other findings, documented in the study by researchers in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy, took place in Zambezia, central Mozambique, and Nampula in the north, and were compared genetically with other known species of various kinds including Nothophryne.

Molecular analysis appears to support the authors belief that each mountain system has a different species, a theory also suggested by “apparent morphological differences”. The researchers give the example of the Taratibu frog, which shows differences in the skin on its back when compared with the Namuli, Inago and Ribáuè examples discovered in Zambezia and Nampula.

In the study, the authors point to the need for more research on the distribution of genus Nothophryne and also to the degradation of habitats, including deforestation for agriculture, which means that the species are “facing a serious likelihood of disappearance”.

The Taratibu reserve in Cabo Delgado last year became a field station of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Lúrio University. “This is an area with great potential for discoveries in the field of biodiversity and where we can expect more discoveries of species new to science,” Farooq says.

In addition to the frog species already confirmed in Taratibu, the Mozambican researcher revealed that another frog and a chameleon were had also been discovered, with genetic testing now underway to confirm their genuine novelty.

Source: Lusa