As the world’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon is home to a staggering 3 million species.
And a team of researchers just published their discovery of one more.
In 2023, Evan Koch — a postdoctoral researcher at the National Museum of the Czech Republic — led a team through the Juruá River basin forests of Brazil on an expedition.
In their travels, they stumbled across a new species of Ranitomeya (a genus of poison dart frogs) that they dubbed “an Amazonian hidden gem.”
The color of the amphibian was so striking that the researchers decided to name it Ranitomeya aquamarina.
“The specific epithet ‘aquamarina’ is a Latin adjective that means ‘pale blue-green’, referring to the coloration of the dorsal-lateral stripes of the new species,” Koch explained in the research, which was published in the scientific journal PLOS One.
“Another aspect that led us to use this epithet was the metallic blue and greenish tones of the stripes, which resemble seawater,” Koch added in the study’s etymological breakdown.
“Additionally, aquamarine is a gemstone, which philosophically conveys the value of this discovery.”
Poison dart frogs are small but hugely significant in the greater food web of the Amazon. By eating ants, mites, and beetles, they help control local insect populations.
Poison dart frogs are also an indicator species. When they begin to disappear from their natural environment, it’s an indication that the ecosystem’s health is on the decline.
Most poison dart frogs only have one predator: the fire-bellied snake (Leimadophis epinephelus), which has built up a natural resistance to the frogs’ poison through evolution.
However, their biggest threats remain habitat loss, pollution, and a widespread chytrid fungus that has had a deadly impact on most amphibians.
Thankfully, after scientists pinpointed the source of the disease last year, newfound conservation efforts have been launched to save the most vulnerable frogs on the planet.
Koch and his team welcomed more research into the “under-sampled” Juruá River basin, emphasizing that there was much more to unearth.
“Finally, it is generally accepted that the true diversity of frogs is still very poorly known in Amazonia. This fact is doubly true for the region of lower and middle Juruá River,” Koch noted.
“Although we are only taking the first steps to uncover the biodiversity of this area, we already have evidence of the extraordinary richness of the local fauna, and we [have] already identified many new candidate species.”
Koch concluded by expressing that new discoveries like the aquamarine poison dart frog add to the Amazon rainforest’s reputation as one of the most biologically diverse spots on the planet.
In a call to action, Koch wrote: “We hope that our research will stimulate more interest in this region, shed more light on its enormous biological wealth and, last but not least, provide important information for its protection.”
Header image via Neil Palmer/CIAT (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
