A new bright yellow frog species has been discovered in the
mountains of western Panama by German biologists. The frog,
described in the journal ZooKeys, belongs to a species-rich
group of frogs, the so-called rainfrogs that lack a tadpole
stage, but develop directly as little frogs inside the egg. The
frog, that measures less than 2 cm, was discovered by Andreas
Hertz and his colleagues, who are reptile and amphibian
specialists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt
am Main, Germany. They discovered it in 2010 during several
field trips to the Serranía de Tabasará of western Panama a
highly understudied part of the Panamanian central mountain
range. “Although we recognized that the male mating call of this
species differs from all what we had heard before and therefore
suspected it to be new, much effort was involved to finally spot
it in the dense vegetation,” Hertz said. “When we finally caught
the first individuals by hand, we noticed that it dyes one’s
fingers yellow when it is handled. The