Monday, April 05, 2010

Visualizing an explosion of amphibians

This is a really cool site. The map of most interest shows the distribution of new amphibians found from 2004 through 2007.

Get this: "Since 1985...well over 2,000 new species have been discovered, which represents a 50% increase in total recognized species." The most popular countries for new amphibians: Brazil, with 68, followed by Papua New Guinea with 46, followed by Sri Lanka with 45.

A note from another source: Herpetologist Chris Raxworthy has reported he has over a hundred new frogs from Madagascar awaiting description. So we're a long way from a full catalog.

THANKS TO Dale Drinnon for pointing me to this site.

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