New frog species hits Broadway

Photo of Leopard frog. Leopard frogs and pickerel frogs are very similar to the new species. Researchers have temporarily named the new frog "Rana sp. nov.", meaning "new frog species."

Written by: Tomek Sysak

New York City just became a little more crowded. Biologist Leslie Rissler and colleagues discovered a new species of frog living around the Big Apple.

Rissler and a colleague had heard talk of an odd croak in the waters near New York. They set up some traps and they caught their prey.

It’s a frog that is more-or-less identical to the pickerel and leopard frogs, common frogs in North America.

“It’s a cryptic species: it’s morphologically similar but genetically distinct,” said Rissler.

It’s genes differ seven percent from its sister species, the pickerel frog. For comparison, humans are about five per cent distinct from chimpanzees.

“I think the take-home message is there’s a lot of undiscovered biodiversity on the planet,” said Rissler.

Changes in environment, like climate change, can kill an entire species, she continued. Finding a new species, like this, is important because “without understanding it, we can’t protect it.”

Biologists estimate there are some 50 million species on this planet, of which humans have identified less than ten per cent.

However, that estimate may be exaggerated, according to David Currie, a professor of ecosystems at the University of Ottawa.

“How many species we don’t know about is an unanswerable question,” said Currie.

Finding new species up north is particularly surprising, because cooler climates have lower biodiversity. Up here in Canada, this is particularly evident.

But finding unknown species in a city like New York or Ottawa is possible, said Currie.

“In virtually no taxa are we not making discoveries,” said Currie. That means, we’re still discovering new mammals, reptiles, bird, insects and others.

Cities, however, often have universities. Universities have students and researchers. They scavenge the land for research subjects, making it particularly unusual to find a new species in a city like New York. New York is home to 110 universities and colleges, although not all of these offer science programs.

It’s more likely that a new species will be found in an unusual environment, like acidic waters, said Currie.

Storm-water ponds are one of those unusual habitats that Christopher Hassall has been looking at. He’s an ecology researcher at Carleton University.

“Urban environments have been found to have more diversity than we thought,” said Hassall. “And biodiversity often pops up in places researchers may not think to look,”

Researchers normally like to go study pristine habitats, where people haven’t interfered with the landscape but more and more pristine habitats are being dedicated to urban sprawl.

“A lot of biodiversity provides services to humans, for example bees that pollinate our crops,” said Hassall. “We don’t really understand the effects of biodiversity on our human modified landscape.”