THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A team of scientists led by ‘Frogman of India’ S D Biju has discovered two new frog species. One of the species, found from the Himalaya biodiversity hotspot, has been named after Kerala journalist E Somanath, who passed away in 2022.
The new species, ‘Soman’s Slender Arm Frog’ (Leptobrachium soman), was discovered from Tiwarigaon in Arunachal Pradesh.
The other species, ‘Mechuka Slender Arm Frog’ (Leptobrachium mechuka), was also found in the evergreen forests and adjacent grassland. This species is named after Mechuka, a small town in Arunachal Pradesh, where it was first collected.
The two new species were discovered by a Delhi University team led by Professor Biju as part of the PhD research of his student, Akalabya.
“More than three years of extensive expeditions to isolated mountain regions of Arunachal Pradesh have led to the discovery of these new species,” Biju said. The study was published on Friday in the United States-based scientific journal ‘Peer J’. The species ‘Soman’s Slender Arm Frog’ has a distinctive silver grey to light blue eyes and measures approximately 55mm in length. The body is marked by greyish brown colour by irregular light grey patterns.
An evergreen forest species, males are found calling from the banks of fast or slow flowing streams. Somanath, a close friend of Biju, often accompanied the latter in field studies. Mechuka Slender Arm Frog measures around 60 mm in length and has a uniformly brown body with a reddish tinge and distinctive silvery white eyes.