30-year-old extinct toad species reappears

The researchers were overjoyed to see 30 star clown toads in the remote jungle in the mountains.

The night toad (Atelopus aryescue) is less than 5cm in size and jet-black with white dots, which can only be found in a single location: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range in Colombia, one of the mountains The highest and most remote coast on Earth. Their name comes from the night sky in this area.

Night clown toad stars have special skin color.(Photo: National Geographic).

According to Lina Valencia, a conservation officer at the nonprofit Global Wildlife Conservation, when the team first saw about 30 black and white clown toads resting on the rocks, their first thought was the scene. The statue looks like the night sky. The Arhuaco indigenous community in Sogrome, who live in the same area as the night clown toad, invited scientists to study the animals.

In the past few decades, researchers have feared that the endangered toad species has disappeared, in part due to the rapid spread of a fungus called chytrid, which caused amphibians to die in mass. In particular, the clown toad is heavily affected by chytrid mushrooms . Of the 96 species of toads belonging to the genus Atelopus, 86 species belong to the group of endangered, extremely endangered or extinct animals in the wild.

Biologists have rediscovered a number of clown toad species in recent years, including the Costa Rica clown toad in 2013, the Azuay stubfoot toad in 2015 and the long-nosed clown toad in 2016. According to Cori Richards-Zawacki, the Amphibian research at Pittsburg University, there is evidence that toad populations survive the chytrid mushroom pandemic and are slowly recovering.

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