New Article: Rainbow Toad, Ansonia latidisca

I remember hearing about that. Such a beautiful creature. Its great to see that its survived.
 
Very interesting article. Short and to the point.

The picture of a toad near the bottom of the article resembles a panamanian gold frog. Are the two related?
 
Apart from both being toads, no.

There are a number of good references online which illustrate this well, this being one of the most recent:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2010/02/04/327.5966.679.DC1/VanBocxlaer.SOM.pdf

The diagram on page 19 shows rather well that Ansonia is more closely related to almost every other toad than it is to Atelopus. In fact, only Oreophrynella is related to Atelopus, and only Melanophryniscus is more "primitive". Ansonia is a closer relative of typical Asiatic toads like the black-spined [Duttaphrynus melanostictus]. This is pretty much the rule - most species have dissimilar close relatives nearby, while similar relatives from far away are only distantly related. That's a big factor in why frog families now number close to 80 and caecilians are up to 9 - they've been shuffled to better reflect actual relationships which are usually geographically and reproductively distinctive.
 
FrogEyes, that link is very nice and has a lot of information. However in doing further research I now understand my confusion and it is a bit unrelated, but still its an informal link.

The article has two picture of two different species and neither of them are even in the genus Ansonia. The article sites that the pictures came from wikipedia and I have found the websites each picture came from.

An identical picture to that of the article is found here.
Atelopus certus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And an identical picture labeled "Panamanian gold frog" is found here.
Panamanian golden frog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As you can see, either the image is mislabeled in this article or wikipedia is wrong. I no expert so could someone please explain what is going on here!

findi, the information on the page was great but the pictures really have me confused. I assumed that the image was the frog you were talking about and the species shown in the picture wasn't mentioned in context or in a picture description. Next time you have a picture of a frog that isn't mentioned in the article, include a caption.
 
Your confusion is understandable. Neither photo is labeled, and only one is properly credited [though you have to guess which one]. Nor does either one have much to do with the article apart from being related to another species mentioned in passing.

Here's an article with a photo of the species under discussion, an a bit more information on this species:
After 8 Decades, Tiny Toad Resurfaces in Asia - NYTimes.com
 
Yeah, I see your point. Just looking at that toad I can tell it has little relation to Atelopus. The images in the article don't belong there. I can imagine lots of people reading the article not realizing the critical error.

"The picture of a toad near the bottom of the article resembles a panamanian gold frog. Are the two related?"

Of course it RESEMBLES a panamanian gold frog. It IS a panamanian gold frog!
 
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