Our lab and collaborator Alex Ttito from the Museo de Biodiversidad in Cusco named a new species of terrestrial-breeding frog, Pristimantis achupalla. The species epithet, achupalla, is a Quechua noun for bromeliads. These minute frogs inhabit water-filled bromeliads, despite their likely (but presumed) direct-development mode of laying eggs in moist environments, with embryos bypassing the tadpole stages and tiny froglets hatching from the terrestrial eggs. The type locality is near Thiuni, in the Department of Puno (province of Carabaya) in the upper watershed of a tributary of the Inambari River. This is the same locality where we also discovered Noblella thiuni and Psychrophrynella glauca, all of them during a short hike to the edge of the cloud forest. The article appeared today in the open access journal PeerJ.
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