New Species of Tiny Pumpkin Toadlet Discovered in Cloud Forests of Brazil

2:19:10

2025-12-11

Deep in the mountains of southern Brazil, a bright orange frog, just over a centimeter long, hops into the spotlight.

The tiny pumpkin toadlet is a whole new, toad-like species of frog, never formally described before.

The highly endemic miniature frog is only found in a very small sliver of mountainous forest, where it inhabits the leaf litter. To ensure its future – and safeguard its endangered relatives – conservationists want the region protected from human exploitation.

The species lives more than 750 meters (about half a mile) above sea level, within the Serra do Quiriri mountain range in the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil.

It belongs to the Brachycephalidae family, scientists say, and two of its orange relatives live nearby in other small slices of the Serra do Quiriri mountains.

Over the past seven years, researchers in Brazil have been looking to catalogue all the Bracycephalus populations in the region, which is how they stumbled upon a new species.

Despite its conspicuous coloring, it was the froglet's call that finally gave the species away.

Scientists were able to locate the males by listening to their mating croaks. The quieter females, meanwhile, were collected "haphazardly".

Back in the lab, the team of scientists carefully analyzed their specimens, conducting genetic sequencing and morphological studies to see how the toadlets compared to other closely related species.

Their analysis led them to declare a new species, named B. lulai, after Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

"Through this tribute, we seek to encourage the expansion of conservation initiatives focused on the Atlantic rainforest as a whole, and on Brazil's highly endemic miniaturized frogs in particular," Marcos Bornschein, a herpetologist at São Paulo State University and colleagues, write in their published paper.

Despite its small range, B. lulai seems to live in a relatively pristine environment, so researchers say it is of 'least concern', conservation-wise.

However, other frogs in Santa Catarina are critically endangered, so a plan to protect them from ongoing habitat loss is essential, particularly from threats such as grassland burning, cattle grazing, invasive plant species, tourism, mining, and deforestation.

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class, globally.

At present, there is a formal discussion underway to establish a federal conservation unit in the Santa Catarina state, ensuring forest protection without the need for the government to buy private land.

"Further sampling of Brachycephalus species is expected to significantly enhance our understanding of intraspecific variation, while also contributing to the revision of species boundaries," Bornschein and colleagues write.

"Both the lack of funds supporting field research and the difficulty of accessing some montane locations remain a problem to increasing sampling, which is sometimes achieved only after opening many kilometers of trails in dense forests."