In the fresh green rainy night On the coastal plains outside Rio de Janeiro, flocks of tree frogs sometimes congregate around the pearly white flowers of milk fruit trees. Seeds seek the sweet nectar of flowers.small, orange Zenohira Trancata‘s sweet tooth may make it the world’s first known pollinating amphibian. There is growing evidence that we need to broaden our understanding of what to do.
While visiting near the town of Armacao dos Buzios in Brazil in December 2020, researchers witnessed a group of frogs (commonly known as Izexons Brazilian tree frogs) feeding on milk fruit. Carlos Henrique de Oliveira Nogueira, a biologist and team member at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, said the stomach contents of museum specimens suggest that the species is one of the few fruit-eating amphibians in the world. previously shown to be one. The researchers saw one of his frogs wiggling around for nectar from flowers, then clinging to pollen on its wet back secretions. This suggests that amphibians may play a role in transporting pollen from flower to flower, helping trees reproduce. The team’s findings recently revealed that food web“Several species have been photographed in flowers, but we have never seen the species interact with flowers,” says de-Oliveira-Nogueira.
The discovery is a promising first step, but more work is needed to prove the frog is a pollinator, says Ruth, a biologist who studies pollination at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Kozien says Future research could include long-term monitoring of flowers using cameras and using frog-free cages to see if milk flower reproduction fails when frogs are inaccessible. There is a nature.
De-Oliveira-Nogueira said there are other questions that still need to be clarified, such as whether the secretions on the frog’s back are harming the pollen or keeping it from flying to another flower. says there is also. Researchers also wonder whether frogs visit flowers in sufficient numbers to make a difference in tree regeneration.
For Cozien, the possibility of frog-mediated pollination shows that unexpected ecological interactions have yet to be discovered when people do basic fieldwork. The past decade has seen a proliferation of descriptions of unexpected pollinators, including lizards, opossums, rats, and cockroaches. Many of these discoveries are due to technology such as camera traps, he says, Cozien. These devices make it easy to catch covert seeds in action. For example, lizard pollination in South Africa has never been seen in person by humans and has only been seen on video footage.
The sighting of the new tree frog is also an intriguing glimpse into a species that has little respect in its homeland, says de-Oliveira-Nogueira. “For most people, it’s just another frog,” he adds.In Brazil, including frogs that attack human habitats X. Trancataoften with unhappy endings thanks to predatory cats and panicked landlords.
“This is probably a game changer, as we now have some visibility on these species,” says de-Oliveira-Nogueira. “This is an endangered species and probably the only [of amphibian] In a world that acts as a pollinator. Losing this species therefore results in the loss of the unique ecological interaction between plants and amphibians. “
