World's Smallest Known Frog

[SludgeMunkey]

Simply amazing. Check out page 2 especially...two eggs...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/photogalleries/smallest-frog-pictures/index.html


:blob:

 

[KennyDB]

This puts a smile to my face, so fascinating!

 

[Otterwoman]

How did she lay those eggs? They're twice as big as her head.

 

[SludgeMunkey]

I wonder the same thing about the eggs. Even more interesting to me is that they don't hatch until they are froglets! Its like a port-a-pond in stereo.

 

[Abrahm]

I read some really neat stuff about micronization Kentwood Well's book (Edit: that I have forgotten). There are some super tiny salamanders out there in the rainforest too.

The eggs are really amazing. I would hypothesize they are huge to provide the material neccesary to completely develop before hatching as the trend has been noticed in amphibians. I wonder what their parental care is like? One would think with such a huge energy investment in such a small clutch (guessing) that parental care of some sort would be important.

 

[fishkeeper]

obviously a K selected species!

 

[Bowl of seeds]

Wow thats a huge egg for something so small :wacko:

 

[Abrahm]

obviously a K selected species!

Neat. I had never heard/read/learned about r/K selection. It seems to be partially discredited these days? For those like me, wikipedia always has a nice bit of baseline information.

 

[Critter Mom]

Thanks for posting! See, we really don't know everything yet.

 

[fishkeeper]

I just remember being taught it in environmental science. I am curious about how the mechanisms have been discredited.

But many animals don't seem to really fall completely into either category.

For example...I'd call bigger rockfish species K strategists since they take a long long time to mature, and can live for 50 years+. Yet big females produce hundreds of thousands of babies.

On the other hand, perhaps these frogs, though they produce few offspring, grow and mature comparatively quickly.

 

[Lamb]

I'm interested to learn more about the natural history of this species. Being so small, it is a huge investment to create eggs that large, and dangerous to guard them. I wonder if the species is an annual one, where each individual is short lived and gets few chances to reproduce so they put everything they've got into each reproductive opportunity?

It's great to read about new finds like this.