AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This is the male mating call of the newly discovered Dajomes glass frog.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAJOMES GLASS FROG CHIRPING)
CHANG: Like many glass frogs, which are found across Central and South America, this one is green on top, and a portion of its underside is transparent enough to see inside of it - hence, glass frog.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A couple of things set this critter apart, though. One of them is that an undergraduate student made the discovery.
MYLENA MASACHE: It was the pandemics, and I needed to start my thesis. So we had to work with the things that we had in the museum because we weren't able to go out for field trips.
KELLY: Mylena Masache is now a grad student at Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. But as an undergrad, back during the pandemic, she started analyzing collections from two previous university-led expeditions to El Quimi Nature Reserve in the mountains of southern Ecuador.
SANTIAGO RON: Actually, finding new species of glass frogs are not as common as finding new species in other groups of frogs, so we were very, very happy about it.
CHANG: Santiago Ron is a professor of evolutionary biology at Pontifical Catholic University. He's helped discover more than 100 species of frogs, and he helped Mylena Masache distinguish this species from about 160 other species of glass frogs.
MASACHE: At some point, I was like, there's nothing here.
KELLY: There was something there. The Dajomes frog has a particularly continuous green backside. Its fingers are yellow. The researchers also estimate it evolved about 4 1/2 million years ago. That age was a strong signal of a unique species.
CHANG: A unique species with a unique name - Masache was inspired by weightlifter Neisi Dajomes who became the first Ecuadorian woman to win an Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo Games held in 2021.
MASACHE: I was excited when I saw Neisi won this medal. And she's also an Afro Ecuadorian from the Amazon part of the Ecuador. And I was like, OK, Santiago, I have the name.
KELLY: No word on how much the frog can lift, but it is facing a burden. Santiago Ron noted that the biodiversity at El Quimi Nature Reserve is threatened by mining.
RON: With this discovery, we are showing that this region in Ecuador is very unique, have species that are found nowhere else on Earth, and it is for that reason, very important to protect these forests.
CHANG: The scientists call the reserve a, quote, "lost world of amphibian diversity," and they call for more research in the area.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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