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How Small Can You Get? Another New-To-Science Flea-Toad Wows Scientists

The smallest vertebrates so far discovered are the flea-toads, which live at the limit for how small any vertebrate can possibly get.

Β© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee

New-to-science flea-toad, Brachycephalus dacnis, perches on a researcher’s palm. (Credit: Lucas Machado Botelho / Projeto Dacnis)

I’ve shared news of several species of extremely tiny frogs and toads, commonly known as flea-toads or toadlets (read more here and here). These tiny amphibians are remarkable because they are much smaller than a human fingernail.

β€œThese are small toads with all the characteristics of large toads except for their size,” said LuΓ­s Felipe Toledo, who is the recently published study’s corresponding author and a professor in the Biology Institute of the University of Campinas (IB-UNICAMP).

The most recently discovered flea-toad to be described was given the scientific name, Brachycephalus dacnis, in honor of Project Dacnis, a conservation, research and education NGO that maintains private areas of the Atlantic Rainforest, including the one in Ubatuba, on the coast of Brazil’s SΓ£o Paulo state, where a Project Dacnis team discovered a new flea-toad, which was classified into the genus, Brachycephalus.

β€œThis genus is different,” Professor Toledo explained. β€œDuring its evolution, it underwent what we biologists call β€˜miniaturization’, which involves loss…

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Gardening, Birding, and Outdoor Adventure
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𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist
𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist

Written by 𝐆𝐫𝐫π₯π’πœπ’πžπ§π­π’π¬π­, scientist & journalist

PhD evolutionary ecology/ornithology. Psittacophile. SciComm senior contributor at Forbes, former SciComm at Guardian. Also on Substack at 'Words About Birds'.

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