In an “extremely rare” discovery, scientists have found three previously unknown species of toads living in the Great Basin of Nevada. It’s rare enough to find new amphibians native to the U.S. — where only three frog species have been discovered since 1985 — but new U.S. toads are especially unusual. The last one was the Wyoming toad, which was found in 1968 and is now extinct.
Unfortunately, the scientists who discovered these toads are worried a similar fate may await one of their newfound trio.
The three species were found by biologists from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), who named them the Dixie Valley toad (pictured above), the Railroad Valley toad and the Hot Creek toad. Their habitats don’t overlap, and they’ve been isolated from other toad populations for more than half a million years, according to UNR biology professor and project leader Dick Tracy.
“We’ve found the toads in small, wet habitats surrounded by high desert completely cut off from other populations,” Tracy says in a statement. “These are absolutely new, true species that have been separated from other populations for 650,000 years.”
The [Center for Biological Diversity] will submit a petition asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect Dixie Valley toads — and thus their habitat — under the Endangered Species Act. “If this power plant goes in and the habitat is dried up, this recently discovered species could go extinct,” he says. “It’s a good candidate for an Endangered Species Act listing.”
As for the other new species, the Railroad Valley toad inhabits Tonopah Basin in the central Nevada desert, while the Hot Creek Toad lives about 35 miles away in Hot Creek Mountain Range. All three are endemic to the Great Basin, a watery wonderland during the Pleistocene Epoch that’s now one of the most arid regions in the country. And since these toads managed to stay hidden until now, their discovery suggests we still have a lot to learn about this ancient American landscape.
“Our goal has been to understand the relationships among toad populations in the Great Basin,” Tracy says. “We’ve found that our knowledge of amphibian diversity in the western United States remains incomplete and that novel discoveries continue to occur, even in unlikely settings. This is really, really neat; an exciting thing, to find something not known to exist before.”
last night I let Ella out after dark and my flashlight beam illuminated a small toad and VERY VERY LARGE wolf spider on the concrete of the back porch, both of whom were EXTREMELY OFFENDED to be interrupted. i think they were having a meeting or , like, making a drug deal
you interrupted their West Side Story musical number
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