Two new frog species discovered in Panama’s fungal war zone

June 2010: Efforts to try to stay ahead of a deadly disease that has already wiped out more than 100 species have led to the discovery of two new frog species.

PRISTIMANTIS EDUCATORIS Collected in El Cope, in Panama's Omar Torrijos National Park, 2-4cm long and has expanded, round and even finger disks and toes that distinguish it from other, closely related species. Its eye colour varies from blood red to yellow- orange above and dark purple to dark grey below. The pupil is horizontal. Picture: Andrew Crawford

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute came across both new species in Panama -Pristimantis educatoris, from Omar Torrijos National Park, and P. adnus from Darien Province near the Colombian border. The discoveries were a welcome by-product of a concerted bid to beat a fungal disease that has been killing frogs worldwide since 1989.

In 2004, 15 years after the disease, called chytridiomycosis, was identified, the associate professor at the University of Maryland, Karen Lips, sounded the alarm that it was devastating the populations of highland frogs in Central Panama and spreading across the country to the east.

‘We are working as hard as we can to find and identify frogs before the disease reaches them, and to learn about a disease that has the power to ravage an entire group of organisms,' said Roberto Ibanez, research scientist at STRI and local director of the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project.

In efforts to save species from extinction, research institutions and zoos from Panama and the United States have scrambled to collect healthy frogs east of the infected area. The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project unites eight institutions including STRI and the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park, along with Panama's environmental authority, ANAM, in a new effort to raise captive frogs in Panama at Summit Nature Park with support from the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center.

Females nuture and care for their eggs

While collecting at Omar Torrijos National Park, Lips' team noticed a common frog that was much bigger than specimens collected elsewhere. Mason Ryan and Tom Giermakowski, from the Museum of Southwestern Biology and the University of New Mexico, compared the frog's feet and toes with frogs in museum collections, concluding that the larger frogs were a new species.

PRISTIMANTIS ADNUS Collected on Cerro Piña in the Serrania de Sapo, Pacific coast of Darien Province, Panama. Males are about 2cm long. Length of females is unknown. The skin of the back is shagreen in colour with scattered, enlarged granules. Iris may be a rosy- gold colour. Picture: Andrew Crawford

They named this new species P. educatoris in honour of Jay M. Savage, emeritus professor of biology at the University of Miami, who taught several generations of students about tropical frogs. Educatoris actually has a double meaning, because females of this species also nurture and care for their developing eggs.

The deadly fungus was first detected in the area east of the Panama Canal in 2008, then during a collecting trip in November 2009 to Chagres National Park, even further to the east, researchers were dismayed to find most of the frogs there were already infected and dying.

There are 197 species of frogs in Panama and Costa Rica

On May 20, researchers from the PARC project returned to what they hope are still fungus-free, healthy frog habitats in Darien Province. On an earlier trip organised by members of Eldredge Bermingham's lab at the Smithsonian, another new frog species was collected by researchers from STRI, the University of Panama and the Círculo Herpetológico de Panamá.
Its name is based on ADN, the acronym for the Spanish acido deoxiribonucleico, meaning deoxyribonucleic acid - DNA - in English.

‘We chose this name to underscore the usefulness of genetic techniques as we identify these new frog species and determine the relationships between tropical frogs that may look very similar,' said Andrew Crawford, professor at University of the Andes and research associate at STRI.

These two reports bring the total number of frog species described in Panama and Costa Rica to 197. Nearly 15 per cent of these new frogs have been described in the past seven years.