A new paper on a Bolitoglossid showed up in my alerts today! 🥳
It is a one-pager and comes with a beautiful photo of a foraging arboreal salamander 😄
Found this Imantodes cenchoa sleeping on top of a leaf in Punta Laguna, Quintana Roo.
Here is a photo of where it was sleeping:
There are a few different snakes of the genus Imantodes in Yucatán. What sets this species apart is that the row of scales on its back consists of enlarged scales. Here is a closeup emphasizing that row of scales. The green arrow points at an enlarged mid-dorsal scale, the blue arrow at a regular scale.
In comparison, here is a photo from an Imantodes tenuissimus that I took back in 2009 in Mérida, Yucatán (with a less sharp camera), and a closeup of its mid-dorsal scales that does not show this enlargement.
One of my favorite frogs! Spent some time specifically looking for it. Managed to find two near Cobá, in Quintana Roo (in the Yucatán peninsula). This frog hides in holes in lime stone and tree trunks, and makes use of its flat head to block the entrance. This type of defense is known as phragmosis.
Some other shots:
Found this anole in Yucatan. I am not sure of its exact species - probably an Anolis sp..
Anoles often sleep at the tips of leaves and twigs. My guess is that this is a strategy to prevent nocturnal predators sneaking up on them through the branches without making its bed vibrate. When woken up they can quickly drop down.
Found many of these frogs under a wet trash bag in a back yard in Mérida, Yucatán. I made use of a handheld flash with a remote trigger for lighting, and a Sigma 105 mm as my macro lens.
These frogs do not seem to match with any of the local frogs reported in Julian C. Lee's field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of the maya world.
From a reverse image search, I mostly found images of the green house frog Eleutherodactylus planirostris. Eleutherodactylus planirostris is native to Cuba and the Bahamas, and is often introduced with plants that come from green houses in those areas. These frogs go from tadpole to frog while still inside of the egg, which explains why the baby frogs are so small.
The visual aspect, the incredibly small baby frogs, and the fact that they were found in a back yard in the city with greenhouse plants, all lead me to conclude that it is likely Eleutherodactylus planirostris.
Saw this nice guy/gal in front of my shed this morning when I took the dog out. The dog was completely oblivious and I was able to get a nice pic without scaring it off.
smh my head 😤
~~She's surprisingly good at climbing tho~~
(actually just a Python Regius if you can't tell lol)
These guys are so pretty, they love hanging out around toilets in the outback.
Several 2cm long frogs were found in this tiny little granite pool in the desert. Any IDs would be welcome, I suspect it could be a Litoria of some sort.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13688681
On the 9 June 2023, at Mala, Karkala, Karnataka, India, researchers found Rao’s intermediate golden-backed frog, (Hylarana intermedia) with a rather fetching, fungal companion growing out of it's side
Mycologists identified the fungi as Common Bonnet, part of the Mycena genus, a type of fungi that mostly grows on rotting wood from dead trees, however it has also been discovered to be able to thrive on living plants as well
The frog appeared to be quite healthy and was not caught, so there's no definitive answer why it was hosting a mushroom, however...
...one of the possibilities is that there is a small piece of woody debris under the skin of the frog after it got lodged in the skin and it has sprouted a mushroom from it....
All photos by Lohit Y.T. one of the researchers who discovered the frog and co-author of the paper
Link to the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.10926
Abstract
Temperature is essential for the survival and development of eggs. Some anurans have evolved and developed foam nesting traits, with thermal insulation considered to be among their functions. Foam-nesting frogs tend to exhibit reproductive plasticity. For example, they oviposit on both trees and the ground. How such plasticity affects foam nest function is of major relevance and is likely related to the adaptation of foam nesting frogs. However, this has not been well studied. In this study, we examined the interaction between foam nest site, foam nest function, and egg fate using the Japanese green tree frog, Zhangixalus arboreus, and analysed how nest site differences (arboreal or terrestrial) affect the thermal function of foam nests. We compared the thermal functions of foam nests between arboreal and terrestrial oviposition sites of Z. arboreus. We artificially replaced half of the arboreal nests with terrestrial environments and recorded temperature in and outside of the experimental terrestrial nest and original arboreal nests. We also examined egg survival and hatching rates for all the nests. The results indicated superior heat insulation in terrestrial nests, with warmer temperatures inside than outside the nests, especially at night, which led to a high egg survival rate. Therefore, terrestrial ovipositing should be valid under cold weather conditions. This may be related to the evolutionary history of oviposition site plasticity of this genus, which originally had an arboreal oviposition trait but evolved into terrestrial site use owing to global cooling. Our novel insights into the evolution and adaptivity of foam nesting and oviposition site use in Z. arboreus make an important contribution to animal ecology.
