Brand new frog species discovered in Arunachal

Itanagar, Sept 20: A new frog species with blue eyes has been discovered in Eagle Nest Wildlife sanctuary at Sessa in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.

Dehradun-based naturalist Sanjay Sondhi during a survey conducted as part of Eagle Nest Biodiversity Project with support of the state forest department discovered the amphibian species in early part of this year, official sources said here today.

The frog, named Bompu after the locality in the sanctuary where it was found, is native to the forest streams at an altitude of 2000 metres and lives under leaf litter and rotting logs.

"The discovery of the new species of frog shows that the forests of Arunachal still host many new species waiting to be found. Therefore conserving the forests and their biodiversity is crucial," chief wildlife warden Jawahar Lal Singh said.

It was described in the international journal Zootaxa in June 2011 by Sodhi and French scientist Annemarie Ohler.

The frog belongs to the family Megophrydae and the genus Leptobrachium. Only 28 members of this genus are known worldwide, and most of them are found in Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and China.

Only two other members of the genus are known from India, which makes the discovery significant. The Eagle Nest Wildlife Sanctuary has been the ground for discovery of several species.

In 2006, Ramana Athreya described Bugun Liochchla, the first new bird species to be described from mainland India in 50 years.

PTI