‘Robust’ creature living in Peru Andes not seen for more than a century — until now

Along the highest points of the Andes, the rolling mountaintops can get cold.

Animals there, including small amphibians far from their tropical rainforest relatives, have to be built to withstand the elements.

A group of terrestrial-breeding frogs , named Strabomantidae, call these peaks home, living most of their life on the ground instead of in trees or along streams, according to a study published Oct. 1 in the peer-reviewed journal Diversity.

They are adapted for the cold weather with “robust” bodies, short limbs and “cryptic” coloration, according to the study.

During an expedition into the Andes by H.H. Keays from 1899 to 1900, the collector found one of these frogs and named it Noblella peruviana, the Peru Andes frog, researchers said.

The frog was packed up and shipped back to the British Museum, according to the study, and no other specimens have ever been entered into the scientific record.

Now, that frog has just been rediscovered for the first time in 116 years.

Researchers were trying to determine if another group of frogs were related to the Noblella species when they noticed that morphology (or the outside appearance) would not be enough to tell them apart and they needed DNA, according to the study.

The only way to do that would be to track down the frogs again, something that hadn’t been done in more than a century.

Researchers trekked into the Peruvian Andes on two expeditions in 2016 and 2017 hoping to reach where the original N. peruviana was collected, according to the study.

They reached a tributary of the Inambari River near the abandoned Inca Mine of Santo Domingo, and began searching for the frog.

The rediscovered species was found along the trail from Santo Domingo to Punto 1, and more than 6,000 feet high in elevation, according to the study.

Eight Peru Andes frogs were discovered and collected and a few were photographed, according to the study. Researchers caught both males and females, and all were less than one inch long.

One female was primarily a red and orange color, but also had blue tones on her stomach and around her eyes. The male frogs had a combination of blue, green, brown, yellow and orange, with mottled patterns and stripes, photos showed.

It is unclear how many of the frogs exist , according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, and little is known about their natural history like their lifespan and reproduction.

Another species, N. bagrecito, was also rediscovered during the expeditions, though after a much shorter period, according to the study.

“We rediscovered N. peruviana 116-117 years after it was last collected and N. bagrecito 42 years after it was last collected, exemplifying the necessity of fieldwork when searching for ‘lost’ and missing species,” researchers said. “... Specifically, both N. perubviana and N. bagrecito are minute, inconspicuous inhabitants of the leaf litter or terrestrial moss layer and only known from their type localities, which in the case of N. peruviana is quite remote.”

The Peru Andes frog was discovered in southeastern Peru, near the border with Bolivia.

The research team includes Rudolf von May, M. Isabel Diaz, Alex Ttito, Roy Santa-Cruz and Alessandro Catenazzi.

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