Frogs, Frogs, Frogs

What a weekend! It started on Thursday afternoon, when Alejandro, a student in Quito and an amphibian expert, arrived in Cuenca. He might be only 18, but in the last year, he found a frog that had last been seen in 1995, and thus, believed to be extinct. He is highly knowledgeable about the frogs around Rumi Loma and La Libertad. So on Thursday afternoon we went to his talk on amphibians and reptiles at la Universidad del Azuay. The lecture was in Spanish, so I followed some but not all of it.

On Friday, we (our group and Alejandro) left for La Libertad. We had no troubles with Big Blue! Of course, he had just gotten out of the shop Thursday afternoon, so we should be able to assume that he’s fine…

After getting to La Libertad and unpacking, Alejandro told us some about the frogs that we could expect in the area, and we headed out around 4:00. The first frogs we found were large tadpoles in a few pools in the middle of the cow pasture. Alejandro identified them as Gastrotheca pseustes, or San Lucas marsupial frogs. Not all frogs in Ecuador produce tadpoles; some give birth to miniature adult frogs, so that limited the possibilities a bit. After a bit more searching, Coral found the mother! Alejandro said that it was quite possibly the only female Gastrotheca within a kilometer.

After dark, we hiked along and through the stream looking for more frogs. We found a fair number of Pristimantis orestes and Pristimantis pycnodermis. One interesting thing about the Pristimantis genus is that its common name in Spanish translates as rubber frog, but due to a misspelling some time ago, it is called a robber frog in English. Rubber makes a lot more sense.

We also found seven red-eyes! Red eyes were only recently discovered and have yet to described by science, so they are simply Pristimantis sp. 2. Their eyes are metallic red. So cool!

We also found a frog that Alejandro had never seen before. He knows that it is a Pristimantis and has a guess on the species, but if he is correct, it has never been found in our area before.

On the way back, we spotted an Andean Potoo. Potoos are rare birds, so it was cool to see him, even if we couldn’t see all that well.

We didn’t get back until 11:45, which is rather late when you consider that most of us had consistently been going to bed at 10:00. However, the time flew.

The next morning, we measured (mass and length) and described the coloration of each of the frogs that we had captured the night before. It was interesting to see the female and male pynodermis next to each other because the female is literally 20 times larger. The following picture really does show two adults frogs of the same species. They're just different genders.

We weren’t leaving until 4:00 again, so we had a bit of free time in the afternoon, during which Elizabeth started teaching us some basic standing on each other tricks. We started with airplane, like when you’re a little kid and balance on your stomach on someone else’s feet. The difference was I remember using hands then, and we didn’t now. Then, we did airplane with the balancing person upside down. Next, we moved onto something called cathedral. It is basically a two person handstand, but a picture describes it best:

That night we went out and found more frogs, including a Pristimantis riveti, which was hard to capture because we was on nachran over the river, about 2 meters up, which is really high for a frog. However, Coral and Alejandro amazingly were able to get it. We also found a nest of baby Pristimantis orestes.

Basically, this weekend revolved around frogs and was a ton of fun. I can actually identify some of them now!