Exquisite new-to-science frog species has golden legs and odd habits

Resplendent with its blue stripes and golden legs, this newly described poison dart frog may look imposing, but it is only about the size of a thumbnail, measuring just 14 to 17 millimetres from the tip of its snout to its derrière, or cloaca.

Esteban Koch at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil, and his colleagues found the frog in the forests of the Juruá river basin in Brazil in 2023 and went back to look for further specimens in 2024. The team has now officially described it and named the species Ranitomeya aetherea.

Little is known about the frog, but there are clues about its parental care system. Koch’s team hasn’t found any large groups of tadpoles, hatched from a big clutch of eggs. Instead, they have spotted only individuals, mainly in water-filled cavities where leaves join the stem on palm-like plants called Phenakospermum guyannense.

The team saw one female deposit a single egg, which suggests that eggs are laid singly, as happens in some other poison dart frogs. “It’s possible that the female goes back when the tadpole is developing and lays another unfertilised egg, so that the tadpole can eat this to get energy,” says Koch.

The researchers don’t know how big the population of the frogs is, so can’t tell if it is endangered, but in the year between the two surveys, they saw there had been deforestation in the area they searched, which they accessed via a small plane and then an 8-hour boat trip on the river. “As the frog is really specific to this plant in this area, any small disturbance could be dangerous to the species,” says Koch.