New Frog Species Discovered in Southern India Biodiversity Hotspot

S.P. Vijayakumar, a postdoctoral scientist in biology, led a team of researchers on an expedition to  isolated hills in Southern India where they discovered a new, ancient lineage of frogs. With a group of scientists that included R. Alexander Pyron, the Robert F. Griggs Associate Professor of Biology, Vijayakumar located the new species—Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, or the “Starry Dwarf Frog”—on a forest floor within the remote Western Ghats mountain range. The discovery could solve evolutionary questions in one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots.