This week, my colleagues Franco Andreone, Frank Glaw, Maciej Pabijan, Miguel Vences and I published a paper describing a previously unknown species of frog from Madagascar (click here for paper). This species is known so far only from Ranomafana National Park and its vicinity. This puts the number of known mantellid frogs from Madagascar at 201 – all of which are endemic to this remarkable island. By comparison, there are currently 108 frog species known from the entire United States. We named the new species Guibemantis tasifotsy; in Malagasy “tasy” means “spot” and “fotsy” means “white” and this refers to the typical series of white spots on the flanks of this small, green frog.
(Photos by Frank Glaw and Miguel Vences)
This new species is part of a lineage of mostly specialized plant-breeding frogs (subgenus Pandanusicola of the genus Guibemantis), however, current evidence suggests that the new species is a pond breeder (it has always been found calling near large swamps, not in the leaf axils of Pandanus plants as in the case with most other members of this group). Whether this is a retention of an ancestral condition or a reversal will be the subject of upcoming work. Several other unrecognized species are known or suspected based on current data. Look for additional species descriptions in the coming months!