The first photos of Atelopus coynei tadpoles

As I’ve described before, I collected the first specimen of Atelopus coynei, a small tropical frog that now has its own Wikipedia page. I collected it in the late 1970s on a field trip to Ecuador with my grad-school bestie, the late Ken Miyata, a man who’s sorely missed (he died in a fishing accident in 1983). As I had loaned Ken $500 to help him pay for rent and food, he did me the honor of naming the frog after me.

As it was rare, and first found in coastal Ecuadorian wet forests, which have largely disappeared, I eventually assumed that my frog was extinct, a metaphor for my own life. But, mirabile dictu, it was rediscovered by the great naturalist and photographer Andreas Kay on February 7, 2012 at Chinambi, Carchi, Ecuador. This was far from the sea, in the rain forest of the Andes foothills near the Colombian border, and the frog was still listed as “critically endangered.”

Then, in 2017, I got an email from naturalist Lou Jost, who reads and contributes to this site, telling me that A. coynei had been found on land close to the EcoMinga Foundation’s Dracula Reserve (Lou co-directs the foundation).

. . . . in December 2017, Javier and our herpetologist and reserve manager Juan Pablo Reyes organized an expedition to explore land we hoped to buy to expand the Dracula Reserve. The expedition included Mario Yanez, a well-known herpetologist from Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity. They were thrilled to discover a good population of Atelopus coynei on one of the properties we were considering!!!! They also discovered another species that had been lost in Ecuador, Rhaebo colomai, though that species was known from a population in nearby Colombia. To top it off they discovered a dramatic completely unknown frog species, yellow with blue eyes!!! This is an amazing area and saving it has become a high priority for us. We are being helped by the Orchid Conservation Alliance, the University of Basel Botanical Garden, and the Rainforest Trust.

The three species mentioned above:

Atelopus coynei, photo by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga. Isn’t it a beaut?

Rhaebo colomai (photo by Mario Yanez):

The new yellow species with blue eyes (photos by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga). I don’t know if it’s been described in the literature yet:

But now the story of A. coynei has been supplemented, as workers at the Dracula Reserve have made the first sighting of its tadpoles! As Lou wrote me on July 28:

Here are the adorable tadpoles and an adult, taken in our Dracula reserve. We are carefully monitoring the population and it looks very healthy. We’ve managed to significantly expand the Dracula Reserve, thanks to grassroots campaigns by the Orchid Conservation Alliance, Reserva: Youth Land Trust, and Rainforest Trust. The photographers of the tadpoles, Milton Canticuz and Luis Micanquer, are local residents who were hired by us as reserve wardens and have become passionate conservationists. I hope you can come and visit them some day!

I surely will. This name is forever, as the scientific names of animals cannot be changed PLUS I’ve never done anything that would make me be canceled.  Here is the gorgeous A. coynei and its tadpoles sent by Lou and photographed by Canticuz and Micanquer:

My beautiful, beautiful frog:

And the first photos of its tadpoles:

Note the developing legs:

Of course I asked if Lou was 100% sure that these were A. coynei tadpoles, and he replied:

No, I’m not 100% sure; it is their deduction based on their knowledge of the patterns of local frogs, and our herpetologist experts (who know the local fauna well) concur.

Here’s some info on my frog taken from Wikipedia:

Atelopus coynei, the Rio Faisanes stubfoot toad, is a species of toad in the family Bufonidae endemic to Ecuador. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical moist montane forests, and rivers. It is threatened by habitat loss.

Description

Atelopus coynei can be differentiated from other similar species by its ventral patterning, thick fleshy finger webbing that covers its first finger, and from its long hind limbs that cause its heels to overlap when the legs are positioned perpendicular to the body (Miyata 1980). 

Range and habitat

Atelopus coynei formerly ranged across the northwestern Andes foothills in Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha and Santo Domingo provinces of Ecuador, where it lives along stream banks in primary and secondary montane forest between 500 and 2,000 meters elevation.

It currently found in only four disjunct areas in Carchi Province, including two locations in Dracula Reserve and Río Chinambi.

Adults are diurnal, active on rainy days on the rocky banks of river and streams. They rest at night on the leaves of streamside vegetation. They lay eggs on rocks in flowing streams. Tadpoles are typical of Atelopus, remaining attached to rocks. [See photos above for tadpoles on rocks.]

Conservation

The conservation status of Atelopus coynei is assessed as critically endangered. It has a very small population which is continually declining from loss and degradation of its habitat, chiefly from agricultural activities. The population is estimated at fewer than 250 mature individuals.

Stay alive, my frog, and please outlive me! I know that Lou, his colleagues, and the EcoMinga Foundation are doing their best.