Fritziana mitus

Fritziana mitus
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Anura
Family:	Hemiphractidae
Genus:	Fritziana
Species:	F. mitus
Binomial name
Fritziana mitus Walker, Wachlevski, Nogueira da Costa, Nogueira-Costa, Garcia, and Haddad, 2018

Fritziana mitus is a frog. It lives in Brazil.

Body

The adult male frog measures 16.16–23.67 mm from nose to rear end and the adult female frog 17.43–28.35 mm. These frogs can be different colors. One female adult frog had a yellow-brown back with a brown mark between her eyes, two brown and cream-white stripes from each eye to the middle of her body. There was a dark brown stripe around each front leg. Other adult frogs had just one color on the back. Most of these frogs have a dark triangle between the eyes. The iris of the eye is bronze in color with a red stripe through the middle of the eye.

Name

Scientists gave this frog the name mitus becuase this is the Latin word for "thread." This species has a piece of DNA that scientists have not seen in any other species. People call DNA "strand" or "thread."

Other frogs

Scientists used to think this was the same frog as Fritziana fissilis, but they looked at the frogs' DNA. Now they know they are two different species.

Home

This frog only lives in forests. People have seen it sitting on plants 1 m (3 ft 3 in) to 3 m (9.8 ft) above the ground and high in the trees where the branches come together like a roof. Scientists saw the frog between 0 m (0 ft) and 800 m (2,600 ft) above sea level.

Scientists have seen this frog in some protected places.

Young

The female frog carries her eggs in a bag of skin on her back. She has 7-10 eggs at a time. She brings the tadpoles to bromeliad plants with water in them. Because each tadpole has a big yolk sac, scientists think the tadpoles don't eat before they become frogs.

Danger

Scientists from the IUCN say this frog is not in danger of dying out. What threat it faces comes from changes to the places where the frogs live, loss of the Atlantic forest. Long ago, human beings cut down many trees] in the Serra do Mar, but people do not do this much any more. The frog lives in protected parks and in places with steep slopes where people do not like to cut down trees. In other places, the frogs are in some danger when people change the forest to make farms, tree farms, towns, and places for animals to eat grass.

First paper

• Walker, M.; Wachlevski, M.; Nogueira-Costa, P.; Garcia, P.C.A.; Haddad, C.F.B. (2018). "A new species of Fritziana Mello-Leitao 1937 (Amphibia: Anura: Hemiphractidae) from the Atlantic Forest, Brazil". Herpetologica. 74: 329–341.

References

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