Courtesy: The Hindu
Scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) have discovered a new genus and species of ‘arboreal toad’ or ‘bush toad’ in the Andaman Islands, which could open up opportunities of research into the geophysical aspects of the region where it was found.
Sized only about 21-27 millimetres from snout to vent, the tiny amphibian named ‘Blythophryne beryet’ can be held between the tip and the first node of the index finger. It was spotted in 2011 by a team of scientists from CCMB and Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, but announced only after rigorous process of confirmation.
Reddish brown on dorsum, the toad is distinct by the presence of an elongated pair of parotoid glands from which it emits a white, viscous and pungent smelling secretion when handled, says a research article published in ‘ZooKeys’, a peer reviewed open access journal on biodiversity research.
The paper mentions five islands where the ‘Andaman bush toad’ could be found, namely, North Andaman (Saddle Peak National Park only), South Andaman, Rutland, Havelock (only in a small patch of wet forest towards the south of the island) and Little Andaman.
As the name suggests, the frog lives in bushes, and breeds in small puddles on trees. Interestingly, the second part of the scientific name is derived from the word for the frog in the ‘Bo’ language spoken by the Great Andamanese people.
Though the language is extinct, the name was found in its lexicon preserved by a professor from Delhi University.
“We heard the word from the sound file and named the species after it. Though it is a new discovery for us, the tribe has known it for long, and had a name too for it, which we must acknowledge,” says Karthikeyan Vasudevan, Senior Principal Scientist of CCMB who was part of the researching team and an author of the co-authored article.
“It is the third most common frog on the island, yet remained elusive to explorers since 1800s. Fauna found in Andamans has no relation to the main land, hence this discovery could throw open new opportunities to estimate the actual age of Andaman Islands,” says Dr. Vasudevan.
Andamans are part of the submerged chain of mountains referred to as ‘Burma arc’ which was formed at the same time as the main Himalayan chain, during the late Cretaceous period. The paper surmises three possibilities for the existence of this toad, namely overland dispersal of the species when the islands were connected to the main land, trans-oceanic dispersal, or relic lineage surviving in the islands during the said period by isolation on mountain tops.
DNA analysis to identify non-deleterious mutations could reveal a lot about the Andamans and the time they were formed, Dr.Vasudevan hopes.
