This Brazilian frog may pollinate milk fruit trees as it visits flowers to sip nectar.
Nestled on a branch in the forests of Brazil lives a frog that may well be helping trees reproduce. It could be an inadvertent effort – the frog wants to sip nectar and covers its back with pollen in the process – but if it is helping trees reproduce, it’s the first pollinating frog ever recorded.
A paper noting the unusual frog behavior published earlier this year in the journal Food Webs, and the discovery emphasizes the diversity of pollinators and the importance of amphibians.
“It’s probably not the only case of this in the world, but it’s certainly significant in that it’s the first one that’s ever been discovered,” says JJ Apodaca, executive director of the national Amphibian and Reptile Conservation organization who was not part of the research team. “It’s really cool.”
Brazilian herpetologist Carlos Henrique de-Oliveira-Nogueira and a team first made the connection between the Xenohyla truncata frog and pollination in the scrubby, sandy ancient dunes off Brazil’s Atlantic coast.
The scientists were working on general amphibian and reptile monitoring when they saw the endangered tree frog.
Frogs as Pollinators?
Nestled on a branch in the forests of Brazil lives a frog that may well be helping trees reproduce. It could be an inadvertent effort – the frog wants to sip nectar and covers its back with pollen in the process – but if it is helping trees reproduce, it’s the first pollinating frog ever recorded.
A paper noting the unusual frog behavior published earlier this year in the journal Food Webs, and the discovery emphasizes the diversity of pollinators and the importance of amphibians.
“It’s probably not the only case of this in the world, but it’s certainly significant in that it’s the first one that’s ever been discovered,” says JJ Apodaca, executive director of the national Amphibian and Reptile Conservation organization who was not part of the research team. “It’s really cool.”
Brazilian herpetologist Carlos Henrique de-Oliveira-Nogueira and a team first made the connection between the Xenohyla truncata frog and pollination in the scrubby, sandy ancient dunes off Brazil’s Atlantic coast.
The scientists were working on general amphibian and reptile monitoring when they saw the endangered tree frog.
Frogs as Pollinators?