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Friday, January 18, 2019
Romeo the Sehuencas water frog (Telmatobius yuracare) may not be the last of his kind after all. After years of searching, scientists from the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny in Cochabamba City, have brought back five more specimens from Bolivia’s cloud forest, including two females, one of whom they have named Juliet. The expedition was partially funded by donations from the public in response to a publicity campaign featuring a profile for Romeo on Match.com. The announcement was made Tuesday.
“The entire team was wet and tired, but we decided to look in one more stream before returning to the camp,” reports team leader, herpetologist Teresa Camacho Badani. “We weren’t too hopeful… but we took a chance anyway and after 15 minutes of searching, about four metres away from the waterfall, I saw a frog jump into a pond formed by the cascade.” She went on in a separate interview: “When I pulled it out, I saw an orange belly and suddenly realized I had in my hands the long-awaited Sehuencas water frog. My first reaction was to yell ‘I found one!’ and the team came running over to help me and pull the frog to safety. It was an incredible feeling.”
Until this report, Romeo was believed to be the only living Sehuencas water frog. He was collected ten years ago, when it was clear the species was threatened, but his caretakers at the Cochabamba Natural History Museum’s K’ayara Centre had not expected it would take this long to find others.
They publicized his plight, including making him a profile on a (human) dating site Match.com last year for Valentine’s Day, which drew international attention and US$25,000 in donations toward efforts to find him a lady friend. “Well hi there. I’m Romeo, a Sehuencas (pronounced ‘say-when-cuss’) Water Frog,” read the profile, “and, not to start this off super heavy or anything, but I’m literally the last of my species. I know – intense stuff. But that’s what I’m on here – in the hopes of finding my perfect match so we can save our own kind (no pressure ;)).”
Chris Jordan of Global Wildlife Conservation, which helped organized the efforts, weighed the pros and cons of taking the new frogs into captivity: “There is always risk in bringing animals in from the wild to build an insurance population, and it isn’t a step that should be taken lightly. But at this point it seems there are too few water frogs in the wild for them to retain a viable population over the long-term, so there’s a greater risk if we don’t do anything.”
Juliet is being checked for a fungus called chytridiomycosis, which has infected many types of amphibians worldwide, before allowing her to come in contact with Romeo. Plans are to allow them to interact in an environment conducive to mating. Hopes are high for the pitter patter of little tadpoles that may eventually be reintroduced to the wild.
The decline of South America’s water frogs is attributed to habitat loss, disease, pollution, climate change and egg predation by trout, an introduced species.