This Frog Just Won’t Croak

Researchers in Tanzania's Ukaguru Mountains have stumbled upon a new frog species notable for its silence. The Ukaguru spiny-throated reed frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis) does not croak, sing, or ribbit.

“It's a very odd group of frogs,” says Lucinda Lawson, a conservation biologist who led the research team. “The male frogs don't call like most other frogs do. We think they may use the spine as something like Braille for species recognition. Without a call, they need some other way to recognize each other.”

Most frogs vocalize as a mating call, so it is unclear exactly how these silent creatures hook up, and it might help explain why this class of frogs are so rare. That and the fact that the Ukaguru forest attracts poachers and small-scale loggers, two groups noted for their disregard of conservation.

“If this one species goes extinct, nothing much happens. We just lose one more strand in the fabric of the ecosystem,” Lawson said. “But if you keep pulling out strands, the ecosystem becomes destabilized and the fabric unravels.”

The biologists had set out in 2019 in search of a beautiful tree toad, Churamiti maridadi, a frog species observed only twice in the wild in this same forest and is now feared extinct. They never found the tree toad but their discovery of the new species of reed frogs was satisfying, even if the frogs are keeping mum.

The discovery is announced in the journal PLOS ONE.

Photo credit: Christoph Liedtke