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25 Aug 2010: World’s Smallest Frog
Discovered in Forests of Borneo

Researchers tracking the planet’s rarest amphibians have discovered what they say is the world’s smallest frog, a pea-sized creature that lives inside and around pitcher plants on the island of Borneo. Scientists found the tiny amphibian, called Microhyla nepenthicola, near a roadside within Kubah National Park. They named the species after the plant on which it depends, the Nepenthes ampullaria, a type of pitcher plant that thrives in damp, shady forests. Researchers say the frogs deposit eggs on the sides of the pitcher, and tadpoles grow in water that accumulates inside the plant. Adults reach a size of only about 10.6 to 12.8 millimeters, or about a half-inch. Indraneil Das, a researcher at the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, said he’s seen century-old specimens of the frog in museums but scientists thought they were the juveniles of other species. Das is one of the scientists tracking “lost amphibians” for Conservation International and the IUCN’s Amphibians Specialist Group. The findings are published in the journal Zootaxa.

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