Santa Fe Frog
Source : Times Of India
GS II : Environment
Overview
- News In Brief
- About Santa Fe Frog
- Dry Chaco
Why in News ?
Scientists from Argentina have found a unique frog known as the Santa Fe frog and are working to preserve it. This frog is special because of its leopard pattern.
News In Brief
- The frog was discovered by the scientists in caverns.
- It only came out to call for a mate.
- As the Dry Chaco is being destroyed, the amphibian appears to be in danger.
- According to reports, experts are collaborating with authorities, hunters, and farmers to have an even stronger system in place to safeguard these frogs.
About Santa Fe Frog
- Leptodactylus laticeps is its scientific name.
- It is a very uncommon species that can only be found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay in South America.
- What is the major threat for the Frog?
- The Dry Chaco, the frog’s natural habitat, is being destroyed.
- IUCN’s designation for conservation: Near Threatened
Need to Protect the Frog
- The Santa Fe frog is a moving representation of the pressing need to protect the Dry Chaco’s few surviving forests.
- The special environment that sustains this rare amphibian is being increasingly destroyed as deforestation rates rise.
- By protecting the frog species, we maintain the area’s fragile biological balance.
Dry Chaco
- It is also called Gran Chaco.
- It is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland natural region
- It is the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
- It is susceptible to a variety of climates, from tropical in the north to warm-temperate in the south.
- It is a sizable geosyncline basin produced when the region between the Brazilian Highlands on the east and the Andean cordilleras on the west subsided (or down warped) as it filled with alluvial debris from these two features.
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