Zee Media Bureau/Shruti Saxena
New Delhi: In an exciting find, scientists at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have discovered as many as nine new species of frogs as small as a thumbnail in the Western Ghats.
A team of researchers led by SP Vijayakumar and Kartik Shanker studied a sample of frogs from all over the Western Ghats using a combination of molecular genetics, geography, frog morphology and other tools to differentiate frogs into lineages. The meaning of lineage here refers to descendants of a common ancestor that have survived a million or more years ago.
The results of the study showed more than 20 potential new lineages.
The Western Ghats is a global biodiversity hot-spot with high species richness as well as generic and familial endemism.
