The special issue Systematics and Conservation of Neotropical Amphibians and Reptiles is now closed, all submitted papers have been published. The final tally is 14 papers, covering frogs, salamanders, caecilians, lizards, and snakes from throughout the Neotropics, with specific studies from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and Brazil. Authors in this special issue named a new genus of frogs (Qosqophryne), four new species of frogs (one terrestrial-breeding frog and three glassfrogs) and five new lizards (three tropidurid and two gymhnophthalmid lizards). A monograph on glassfrogs of Ecuador span the three thematic areas. Among contributions on biogeography, approaches ranged from species distribution patterns to the use of barcoding at the country level, phylogenomic analyses using ultra-conserved elements, and island biology. The remaining studies examined current conservation issues, examining the impact of mining, fungal disease, and the conservation implications of endemism.
Here's the final list of articles:

A New Species of Andean Gymnophthalmid Lizard (Squamata: Gymnophthalmidae) from the Peruvian Andes, and Resolution of Some Taxonomic Problems
by Luis Mamani,Juan C. Chaparro,Claudio Correa,Consuelo Alarcón,Cinthya Y. Salas and Alessandro Catenazzi
Diversity 2020, 12(9), 361; https://doi.org/10.3390/d12090361 - 21 Sep 2020

Recent and Rapid Radiation of the Highly Endangered Harlequin Frogs (Atelopus) into Central America Inferred from Mitochondrial DNA Sequences
by Juan P. Ramírez,César A. Jaramillo,Erik D. Lindquist,Andrew J. Crawford and Roberto Ibáñez
Diversity 2020, 12(9), 360; https://doi.org/10.3390/d12090360 - 18 Sep 2020

Glassfrogs of Ecuador: Diversity, Evolution, and Conservation
by Juan M. Guayasamin,Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia,Roy W. McDiarmid,Paula Peña and Carl R. Hutter
Diversity 2020, 12(6), 222; https://doi.org/10.3390/d12060222 - 02 Jun 2020

A New Genus of Terrestrial-Breeding Frogs (Holoadeninae, Strabomantidae, Terrarana) from Southern Peru
by Alessandro Catenazzi,Luis Mamani,Edgar Lehr and Rudolf von May
Diversity 2020, 12(5), 184; https://doi.org/10.3390/d12050184 - 08 May 2020

Impact of Habitat Loss and Mining on the Distribution of Endemic Species of Amphibians and Reptiles in Mexico
by Fernando Mayani-Parás,Francisco Botello,Saúl Castañeda and Víctor Sánchez-Cordero
Diversity 2019, 11(11), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11110210 - 05 Nov 2019

The Western Amazonian Richness Gradient for Squamate Reptiles: Are There Really Fewer Snakes and Lizards in Southwestern Amazonian Lowlands?
by Daniel L. Rabosky,Rudolf von May,Michael C. Grundler and Alison R. Davis Rabosky
Diversity 2019, 11(10), 199; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11100199 - 18 Oct 2019

Three New Lizard Species of the Liolaemus montanus Group from Perú
by César Aguilar-Puntriano,César Ramírez,Ernesto Castillo,Alejandro Mendoza,Victor J. Vargas and Jack W. Sites, Jr.
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090161 - 11 Sep 2019

Barcoding Analysis of Paraguayan Squamata
by Pier Cacciali,Emilio Buongermini and Gunther Köhler
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090152 - 30 Aug 2019

Conservation Status of Brachycephalus Toadlets (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest
by Marcos R. Bornschein,Marcio R. Pie and Larissa Teixeira
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090150 - 27 Aug 2019

Ecological and Conservation Correlates of Rarity in New World Pitvipers
by Irina Birskis-Barros,Laura R. V. Alencar,Paulo I. Prado,Monika Böhm and Marcio Martins
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 147; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090147 - 27 Aug 2019

A New Species of Terrestrial-Breeding Frog (Amphibia, Strabomantidae, Noblella) from the Upper Madre De Dios Watershed, Amazonian Andes and Lowlands of Southern Peru
by Roy Santa-Cruz,Rudolf von May,Alessandro Catenazzi,Courtney Whitcher,Evaristo López Tejeda and Daniel L. Rabosky
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090145 - 26 Aug 2019

Biogeography, Systematics, and Ecomorphology of Pacific Island Anoles
by John G. Phillips,Sarah E. Burton,Margarita M. Womack,Evan Pulver and Kirsten E. Nicholson
Diversity 2019, 11(9), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11090141 - 21 Aug 2019

Endemic Infection of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in Costa Rica: Implications for Amphibian Conservation at Regional and Species Level
by Héctor Zumbado-Ulate,Kiersten N. Nelson,Adrián García-Rodríguez,Gerardo Chaves,Erick Arias,Federico Bolaños,Steven M. Whitfield and Catherine L. Searle
Diversity 2019, 11(8), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11080129 - 09 Aug 2019

Phylogenomic Reconstruction of the Neotropical Poison Frogs (Dendrobatidae) and Their Conservation
by Wilson X. Guillory,Morgan R. Muell,Kyle Summers and Jason L. Brown
Diversity 2019, 11(8), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/d11080126 - 29 Jul 2019

Alex's defense on 23 October. Congratulations Alex!

Alex Shepack will be defending his dissertation on October 23rd. His dissertation, "Back from the Brink: Rebounding and Remnant Amphibian Populations in a Pathogen Enzootic Environment," examines the long-term impacts of the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) on Neotropical amphibians. Research in Peru yielded insights on how a single species can dominate the transmission of Bd in the environment, and potentially shape the rest of the amphibian community. Work conducted across Costa Rica helped characterize the demography and structure of a recovering population and examined the changes in genetic structure that arise from declines and recoveries. If you're interested in learning about these projects (and more!), please contact us. We'd love for you to join (via Zoom) on October 23rd at 2P.M. EST! You can attend on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uejlRSNUejU

A lab collaboration, led by Valia Herrera of the Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad de San Marcos in Lima, reports the discovery of a new species of harlequin frogs: Atelopus moropukaqumir. The name is made up of a combination of different adjectives from Quechua. Moro means spots. Puka, red. Q’umir, green. The frogs are olive green, their bodies scattered with ruby red dots. Harlequin frogs have suffered greatly during outbreaks of chytridiomycosis, and many species have disappeared and have not been seen for several decades. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find a population of these frogs in a montane forest, despite the presence of the fungal pathogen.

Many species of Atelopus, especially at mid and high elevations, have vanished over the last three decades. The exact timing of these population declines is difficult to reconstruct, but there are reports of mass die-offs, such as the Atelopus patazensis in the inset photograph in 1999. In the Kosñipata Valley near Manu National Park, the two known species of harlequin frogs, A. cf. erythropus and A. tricolor, have not been seen since the early 2000s, despite frequent surveys at their known breeding creeks. These disappearances coincided with Bd epizootics sweeping through the cloud forests of southern Peru in the early 2000s. The last recorded observation of A. cf. erythropus occurred at Megantoni National Sanctuary in 2004. Two visits to the type locality of A. erythropus near Santo Domingo, Puno, failed to reveal any trace of A. erythropus or the sympatric A. tricolor in 2016 and 2017. 

In the context of serious population declines, extirpations and possible extinction of montane harlequin frogs, our discovery of a population of harlequin frogs in southern Peru is significant and renews hopes of persistence and recovery of these unique amphibians. 

We collaborated with Luis Mamani from the Universidad de Concepcion and the Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad and the Museo de Biodiversidad in Cusco to describe a new species of lizard, Cercosaura pacha from Oxapampa in Peru. The new species lives in the montane forests on the eastern slopes of Cordillera de los Andes, Department of Pasco, central Peru, between 1845–1986 m a.s.l., although its precise distribution is unknown. The specific epithet “pacha” is a noun from the Quechua language that means Earth.

The new paper, titled "After the epizootic: Host–pathogen dynamics in montane tropical amphibian communities with high prevalence of chytridiomycosis" appeared today in Biotropica. In the cloud forests of the Kosñipata Valley of Manu National Park, where chytrid infection (Bd) is highly prevalent, we have monitored frog communities since 1996. An epizootic of chytridiomycosis caused the disappearance of 35% of species richness in the early 2000s. 

In this study authored by former Ms student Brandon LaBumbard (now PhD student at UMass), and coauthored by current PhD candidate Alex Shepack, we investigated the post‐epizootic Bd prevalence and infection intensity within the remnant amphibian community from 2008 to 2015, and modeled Bd dynamics as a function of species, season, reproductive mode, life stage, and elevation. Prevalence was higher in 2012–2015 than in 2008–2009, but overall prevalence has remained fairly constant (~50%) post‐epizootic. We found that while prevalence decreased with elevation during the wet season, it increased with elevation during the dry season, potentially due to seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation.

Our data suggest that the few stream‐breeding species that survived epizootics, such as Boana gladiator (see picture here), might facilitate Bd infection in sympatric susceptible hosts (most of which are terrestrial‐breeding species) by helping keep Bd in the environment, and by acting as reservoir hosts. Reservoirs thereby lead to continual declines of susceptible species long after initial Bd emergence, warranting the need for long‐term monitoring to understand population and species extinction risks in remnant populations in areas where Bd is still present and causing disease.

We would like to give special thanks to Peru Verde and the staff at Gallito de las Rocas lodge for their support and for allowing us to work at the San Pedro biological station.

The lab has been awarded an NSF grant, part of the collaborative proposal "Linking Host Life History, Movement Ecology, and Climate to Predict Epizootics in Megadiverse Tropical Amphibian Communities", with collaborators Gui Becker (University of Alabama) and Rayna Bell (California Academy of Sciences). Field sites include frog communities in Brazil, Peru, and Cameroon

The funded collaborative project will include 1) field surveys spanning the old world and new world tropics to assess infection patterns in diverse amphibian communities across space and time, 2) a field experiment to isolate the effects of climatic variability on amphibian community structure and disease risk, and 3) novel methods of disease modelling that integrate observational and experimental data to forecast disease dynamics and population demographics at the community scale. A cornerstone of this integrative approach is to examine the disease dynamics of fully terrestrial amphibians. This guild of tropical frogs has been experiencing cryptic population declines and extinctions ostensibly linked to disease, droughts, shifts in host behavior, spatial aggregation, and pathogen spillover. The field survey component will compare spatiotemporal disease dynamics among co-occurring terrestrial-breeding and aquatic-breeding amphibian species, focusing on divergent host movement patterns and responses to climatic variability. ​

Meet the newest addition to the high-Andean genus Phrynopus: Phrynopus remotum. The new species was discovered by collaborators and coauthors Germán Chávez and Luis García Ayachi, and is known from a single locality in the central Andes of Peru (Departamento de Huánuco) at 3,730 meters of elevation. The description appeared today in the journal PeerJ. The new species is morphologically distinguishable by the presence of small tubercles on upper eyelids and heels, an areolate venter, and the absence of dorsolateral folds or ridges. Similar to most species in this genus, P. remotum lacks the tympanic membrane and annulus, i.e. there is no external tympanum. It also shares an overall compact body shape and short limbs, traits that are associated with life in high-Andean grasslands and cloud forests just below the treeline in several genera of strabomantid frogs, such as Bryophryne, Phrynopus and several species of Pristimantis.  

Along with collaborators Luis Mamani, Edgar Lehr and Rudolf von May, we named a new genus for three species of terrestrial-breeding frogs previously described as Bryophryne. The new name, Qosqophryne, is dedicated to the city and region of Cusco in southern Peru, where these frogs live. As far as we know the three species only occur in the Vilcabamba mountain ridge. The paper is published as part of a special issue on Neotropical herpetofauna.

On the basis of molecular phylogenies, the genus is the sister genus to Microkayla, a larger group of similar frogs distributed in Bolivia and extreme southern Peru (Department Puno). These two genera (Qosqophryne and Microkayla) are more closely related to species of Noblella and Psychrophrynella than to species of Bryophryne. Although there are no known morphological synapomorphies for either Microkayla or Qosqophryne, the high endemism of their species, and the disjoint geographic distribution of the two genera, with a gap region of ~310 km by airline where both genera are absent, provide further support for Qosqophryne having long diverged from Microkayla. The exploration of high elevation moss and leaf litter habitats in the tropical Andes will contribute to increase knowledge of the diversity and phylogenetic relationships within Terrarana.