A group of scientists led by Dr Brian Kubicki of Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center has described a new glassfrog species from the Caribbean foothills of Costa Rica.

The newfound frog belongs to the genus Hyalinobatrachium in the amphibian family Centrolenidae. With its 149 species, this family is found from southern Mexico, through Central America, into the northern half of South America, and along the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil and the extreme northeastern margin of Argentina.

The new species, named the Diane’s bare-hearted glassfrog (Hyalinobatrachium dianae), lives in the tropical wet forests and premontane rainforests of the Caribbean foothills of Costa Rica, at elevations between 400–800 m.

The species name honors Dr Kubicki’s mother Janet Diane Kubicki. “We propose the name ‘dianae’ in dedication to the senior author’s mother, Janet Diane Kubicki, who always encouraged Brian’s life-long interest with natural history and especially fishes and amphibians,” the team wrote in the paper published in the journal Zootaxa.

“Additionally alluding to the Roman goddess of the hunt, wild animals and woodlands, Diana, who was believed to have a preference of dwelling in sacred forests on high mountains. This being in relation to our own ‘hunt’ among Costa Rica’s mountainous forests to better understand the amphibians dwelling within.”

The new species was described from six specimens collected at three different sites along the Caribbean slopes of Costa Rica.

Dr Kubicki and his colleagues, Dr Stanley Salazar of the Research & Adventure Park in Costa Rica and Dr Robert Puschendorf of Plymouth University, UK, distinguished it from other glassfrogs due to its unique combination of morphological characteristics, advertisement call, and genetic distance.

The Diane’s bare-hearted glassfrog is a small frog about 2.7-2.9 cm long. It is lime green in color and has a transparent belly.

“It is a nocturnal frog that has been observed to inhabit mature secondary and primary humid forests with varying topography. This species has not been encountered in high densities, during evenings when we have encountered actively calling males typically only one to three individuals have been heard or observed at a particular site,” the scientists wrote.

“Males of this species call at night from sites among the forest understory. Males have only been observed calling from the underside of the vegetation, but being that some other congeners can at times be observed calling from the upper leaf surface, it is possible that males occasionally call from the upper leaf surfaces as well.”

With the addition of the Diane’s bare-hearted glassfrog, Costa Rica is known to have 14 glassfrog speices inhabiting its territory. The last time a new species of glassfrog was described from this country was back in 1973.

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Brian Kubicki et al. 2015. A new species of glassfrog, genus Hyalinobatrachium (Anura: Centrolenidae), from the Caribbean foothills of Costa Rica. Zootaxa, vol. 3920, no. 1; doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.3920.1.4