New Fanged Frog Species Gives Birth To Tadpoles
New Fanged Frog Species Gives Birth To Tadpoles
Proving there is always an exception to the rule, it was discovered that a new species of fanged frogs give birth to live tadpoles, instead of dropping fertilized eggs.
Limnonectes larvaepartus is a species of fanged frogs thatlive in the rain forests of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Islands.
Jim McGuire, a herpetologist from University of California Berkeley and a researcher, says in a new study that researchers have suspected since the 1980s that this particular species of frogs might give birth to tadpoles.
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They couldn’t prove it, however, until early 2000, when they sliced open a frog specimen and “out wriggled” small tadpoles, he said.
“We had no idea that the frogs could do this,” McGuire said. “It was sort of like, ‘Woah, what is this.'”
McGuire and a group of international researchers published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE on Dec. 31.
McGuire says that nearly 6,000 frogs species lay unfertilized eggs to reproduce, and just a dozen have evolved internal fertilization to give birth to” froglets.”
Until recently, however, no one knew frogs could lay live tadpoles.
He said it’s likely the species adapted to this reproductive mode to limit the exposure to predators: “Almost certainly the explanation for this reproductive mode is to limit the duration of the tadpole stage.”
McGuire said they believe the frogs store up to 50 tadpoles in each of their oviducts.