New Frog Species Found In NYC 66
interval1066 writes "Ars Technica reports that a paper by biologists Catherine E. Newmana, Jeremy A. Feinbergb, Leslie J. Risslerc, Joanna Burgerb, and H. Bradley Shaffer, in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (abstract of paywalled article), describes a new subspecies of leopard frog has been found living exclusively in New York City. The researchers describe in the paper that the new frog has a distinctive croak, quite different from the two existing species of leopard frogs on the East Coast. The new frog is also stand-offish and tends to impotently honk its horn when stuck in traffic."
IANAB - I am not a biologist (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no biologist, but isn't this almost statistically certain to be happening all over?
I recall that in the London subway, evolutionary variation into distinct species was observed in insects (?) in different tube lines.
Hell, my house is over 100 yrs old, and I suspect that we probably have at least 3 identifiable strains of otherwise-common animals:
- house spiders: the ones on the living levels of the house are much more spindly, with darker colors that match our woodwork more closely. They are much calmer, staying still when disturbed. Their webs tend to be very fine and delicate.
- basement spiders: our cellar hosts a healthy population of spiders, roughly similar in form to the house spiders, but much paler, more aggressive, weaving thicker webs.
- houseflies: in our attic (not finished until we moved in, in 1992) there is a particularly massive type of housefly. Not a bottlefly, it is as far as I can see simply a gigantic version of a typical housefly, roughly 2x the size in each dimension (ie about the size of a large bluebottle fly). It's our speculation that they are seriously inbred and stupid - they are very slow-reacting, flying slow in straight lines, our dog bites them out of the air....and he's not too quick either. In fact, last summer we noticed one of these flies was killed by a closing door.
It's more a matter of at what point a 'drift' in some subgroup is significant enough to say "this is a new species" than "OMG, look, totally new frog here!", no?