LITORIA MIRA

LITORIA MIRA

Subject: Environment

Context: Recently, a team of Australian scientists has discovered a curious “chocolate frog” tree frog i.e. Litoria Mira in the lowland rainforests of New Guinea.

Concept:

About Litoria Mira

• It is a species of frog lives in the rainforests of New Guinea that appears to be made from chocolate.
• It is inspired by the Latin adjective mirum, which means surprised or strange.
• It stems from the scientist’s surprise in discovering an undescribed member of the predominately Australian Litoria genus of tree frogs.
• It has a well-known relative i.e. the common green tree frog of Australia called Litoria cerulean.
• It can be distinguished from all other Litoria by its unique combination of moderately large size, webbing on hand, relatively short and robust limbs, and small violet patch of skin on the edge of its eyes.
• The reason that the chocolate frog from New Guinea and the Australian green tree frog are similar is that Australia and New Guinea used to be linked by land for much of the late Tertiary period.
• It was discovered in one of the world’s most unpleasant places for humans i.e. a hot rainforest swamp infested with malarial mosquitoes, spiky trees and crocodiles and without roads.