Recently, a new species of frog was discovered in Borneo. This is the smallest frog in all of Asia, Europe, and Africa, and one of the smallest in the world. The average adult male measures from 10.6 - 12.8 mm in length. These frogs were discovered by the edge of a road, and were named after a type of pitcher plant called, nepenthes ampullaria. The amphibians, officially dubbed, microhyla nepenthicola, depend on the plant to live. The adults lay their eggs along the inside of the plant, and the baby frogs grow up in the safety of the water that is collected by the pitcher. 100 year old specimens of this newly-found species have been collected and stored in museums, but scientists believed that they were the young of other amphibians. Now, with this new information, scientists have started to hope that they can gain information with studying them, and then help more and more amphibians to stay alive.
I thought that this article was really interesting, because pitcher plants contain digestive juices in the water that the baby frogs grow up in. Pitcher plants eat insects. An insect goes down into the water to get a drink, but they can't get out. The sides of the pitcher plant are slippery, so the insect can't climb, and it sinks down into watery oblivion. The digestive juices in the water help break the bug down. The frogs either must stay at the top if the acids are more dense than water, or they somehow must be immune to the juice. People have hydrochloric acid in their stomachs, but we're protected by a thick layer of mucus around the inside lining. The mucus gets eaten away after a couple days, but our bodies produce more and more. These frogs could have similar mucus around their whole bodies in order to protect themselves from the digestive juices.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100825094915.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment