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@amyedunham Amazing. Are you familiar with this scan of Rhombophryne vaventy?
Modern taxonomy is more about collaboration than ever! Here are some of the 83 #NewSpecies I've described with *incredible* colleagues, especially Frank Glaw, Miguel Vences, Jörn Köhler, @andolalao, and @ACrottini
#TaxonomistAppreciationDay
Full list here: https://t.co/6y1dkE1EGL
It really does resemble that genus in its external appearance, except that it has rather unusual hand morphology with a huge prepollex—an absolute giveaway of Anodonthyla!
#MadagascarFrogs
My gran, Jean Le Page, was a trained nurse. She joined him on the mission, and they were actually married in Que Que, Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). They had an incredibly strong partnership until the end. She passed away in September. It’s been a sad few months.
Amazingly, the scan of the holotype of the new species, which we dubbed Rhombophryne vaventy (vaventy is Malagasy for 'big'), revealed a beautiful pill millipede, Zoosphaerium, in its stomach.
#MadagascarFrogs #BonesDay
If you want to support this project, you can buy posters, tshirts, and mugs of the #MadagascarFrogs on my redbubble, and also stickers and magnets of many of the individual #FrogOfTheDay species!
https://t.co/dwbU9RVrha
Not only did they show that toxicity is passed on to the offspring through egg provisioning, but also that the parts of the frogs' brains involved in this #ParentalCare are similar, though with oxytocin playing different roles
#MadagascarFrogs
📸Graphical Abstract of their paper
Oskar Boettger described this species as 'Phrynocara laeve' based on a single specimen from eastern Madagascar. At the time he described it as being in 'marvellous' condition. Fortunately, it remains in excellent condition today.
#MadagascarFrogs
This was a particularly difficult group to work on. We had hoped that micro-CT scans would make things a lot easier, but that work wound up being more like palaeontology or forensics than typical descriptive osteology. How does this even happen to a skull‽