Treefrogs and the like (Hylidae)- Central America

Red-eyed streamfrog (Duellmanohyla uranochroa)

Red-eyed Stream Frog (Duellmanohyla uranochroa) Critically Endangered! In an age of rapid extinction and extirpation, the good news comes to us few and far between. Species disappear overnight while others were not even formally described until the wild populations were already lost. Unfortunately, in the tropics, amphibian recovery rates are virtually unknown. Though, wading through the headlines of amphibian disease journals and through the mountain streams in which they were written about, we receive fleeting signs of hope; the last of which I wrote about was the apparently increasing population of Anotheca spinosa and the breeding population of montane Isthmohyla rivularis that I have been monitoring here in Costa Rica. Last night, 19 March 2013, two previously unknown populations of Red-eyed stream frogs (Duellmanohyla uranochroa) were discovered in the Talamanca mountains on the Pacific versant of Costa Rica. A little over a decade ago, as if almost overnight, this species had disappeared from its known sites in Costa Rica. The discovery of these two "new" populations of this critically endangered hylid in no way secures its future in the ecosystem, but it does however provide us, the weary tropical biologists, with a most welcomed ray of hope. -Don Filipiak "It was formerly common but as of 2002 had apparently disappeared from its entire Costa Rican range except for a remnant population at Monteverde where it has declined substantially since the late 1980s. As of 2007, a new population was found in Tuis de Turrialba, Costa Rica (Brian Kubicki pers. comm.)."- IUCN Redlist 2004

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