New New Guinea frog is world’s smallest vertebrate

From the Public Library of Science:

New species of tiny frog is world’s smallest vertebrate

Researchers have found two new frog species in New Guinea, one of which is the new smallest known vertebrate on Earth. The results are reported in the Jan. 11 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, and the team of researchers was led by Christopher Austin of Louisiana State University.

The new smallest vertebrate species is called Paedophryne amauensis, named after Amau Village in Papua New Guinea, where it was found. The adult body size for these frogs ranges from just 7.0 to 8.0 millimeters.

According to Dr. Austin, the discovery “is of considerable interest to biologists because little is understood about the functional constraints that come with extreme body size, whether large or small”. The previous smallest vertebrate was a fish, called Paedocypris progenetica, with an adult size of 7.9 to 10.3 millimeters.

See also here. You can also listen to the new frog’s mating call there.

See also here. And here. And here.

Is this frog really the smallest vertebrate? See here.

February 2012 – Amphibian populations are declining around the world, to the extent that some of the last survivors of Central America’s once rich diversity of frogs now exist only in captivity. A male Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog, believed to be one of only two of his kind left on Earth, has died at Zoo Atlanta: here.

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