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A TEAM of scientists has discovered a new species of frogs at the highest peak of the Western Ghats. The same team had earlier found the purple frog whose ancestors had evolved alongside the dinosaurs.

In this week’s cover story of Current Science published from Bangalore, S. D. Biju of Delhi University and Franky Bossuyt of the Free University of Brussels have assigned it a new name — Raorchestes resplendens.

The first part of the generic name of this relative of the shrub frogs honours Prof C. R. Narayan Rao ( 1882 – 1960), for his contributions to the study of amphibians. Rao taught zoology at Central College in the city.

The latter part of the name, Raorchestes, is based on the first ever generic name coined for frogs — Orchestes.

The species name, in Latin, means ‘ bright- coloured, glittering, resplendent’. Bright orange to reddish, bulging with several big glands, having very short limbs, the frog showed its uniqueness in genetic tests.

Belonging to the rhacophoridae family, which has about 300 species spread across tropical Asia and Africa, they usually make foam nests, doing away with the free- swimming tadpole stage. They breed from the soil to the forest canopy — hence the name tree frogs The frogs are orange in colour with several big glands and short limbs.

and bush frogs.

The researchers located a pair of frogs in bamboo thickets on the mountaintop late in the afternoon.

By that night, the female burrowed the eggs under the moss- covered forest floor, deep inside the base of bamboo clumps. Later they observed the eggs hatching from what looks like glass bubbles in their lab.

The species is likely to be found in less than 3 sq km on the Anamudi summit in Kerala, 2,695 metres above sea level, where temperature dips to minus 3 degree Celsius.

The scientists have suggested top- priority conservation for the new frogs.

Western Ghats, an ancient mountain range, is a treasure trove. In 2003, Biju and Bossuyt had found the rare purple frog or the Jurassic frog ( Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis).

Its close relatives were found in the Seychelles archipelago, 3,000 km and an ocean away suggesting there was a single undivided land mass called Gondwana long ago.

In a parallel study published later Sushil K. Dutta ( now at North Orissa University, a coauthor of the new paper) and team had also found the purple frog in the Ghats.

Scientists say any discovery of a new family among vertebrates ( advanced animals with backbone) is a rare event.

In an earlier comment, Prof Raghavendra Gadagkar of the Centre for Ecological Studies at the Indian Institute of Science said the Western Ghats helps in study of evolution of life on earth over 100 million years.

“ These fragile mountain ecosystems are under severe onslaught because of developmental activities,” he said.