Today I want to take you to know about the vertebrate Pu'er tree frog.
Pu-erh tree frog
Zhangixalus puerensis
Vertebrates, amphibians, tailless order, tree frog family, Zhang's tree frog genus. It inhabits a forest swamp meadow with a high climate and high humidity, at an altitude of 1990-2000 meters, with a large number of cordyceps and sedges. It is only distributed in Yunnan, and because the type specimen was collected in Pu'er, it was called "Pu'er Tree Frog". Photo taken on Gaoligong Mountain.
The Pu'er tree frog is a tree frog with a relatively beautiful pattern. Its mouth is green or dark green on the snout, above the head, on the back, and on the limbs, and it is regularly covered with round or nearly rounded ochre-red spots with a dark brown ring at the edge of the spots. In general, female frog spots are denser and more pronounced, while male frog spots are sparse and inconspicuous. The abdomen is predominantly off-white in color and is distributed with irregular gray-brown markings.
Like all tree frogs, the Pu'er tree frog has suction cups on its fingers and toes, and the suction cups at the finger ends are significantly larger than the suction cups at the end of the toes, which evolved to facilitate its climbing plants. Male frogs have single-throated external vocal sacs, the male frog in the photo is chirping, and the semicircular "sphere" with a bulging chin is the vocal sac.
Of course, the Pu'er tree frog also has something different from other tree frogs, that is, it has more "knots" on its body than other tree frogs, and academics call these "knots" warts. It has dense, fine warts on the top of the head, back, body side, submandibular area, and pharynx, and larger warts under the abdomen and under the femur.
Through the introduction of the previous issues, I believe that the friends all know that frogs are completely metamorphosed animals, and the life cycle will experience three forms: eggs, tadpoles, and adult frogs. So guess where the eggs of the Pu'er tree frog will be laid? Is it in the waterhole that people think of? The wonder of nature is that different environments have evolved different species. The Pu'er tree frog introduced today is a unique existence!
Frogs that usually lay their eggs in waterholes are linked together by egg clumps or ribbon-like eggs. The Pu'er tree frog, on the other hand, lays eggs on the tree. Whenever the pair is successful, the female of the Pu'er tree frog will produce a milky white follicle on the leaves or branches near the water source. The size of the follicles is about the size of an adult's fist, and in general, each follicle is about 10 cm in diameter and about 10-12 cm in height, and there are individual follicles that can reach about 13 cm in diameter.
Structurally, the follicle is divided into two layers: inner and outer. The inside of the follicle is a regular arrangement of frog eggs, while the outside is a layer of white "foam" that is used to maintain the humidity and temperature required for the frog eggs to hatch.
What's even more amazing is that the Tadpole of the Pu'er Tree Frog is more drought-tolerant and develops faster than the tadpoles that hatch in the waterhole. This is mainly because its "parents" willfully lay eggs on the tree, resulting in tadpoles facing two situations after hatching: one part of the "lucky one" hatches below the waterhole, while the other part of the "unlucky egg" will encounter a small puddle that may dry up at any time after hatching.
Just as the so-called "one side of the water and soil to nurture the other side of the frog", we do not have to worry too much about those "unlucky eggs". In order to adapt to the environment, the Tadpole of the Pu'er Tree Frog can leave the water surface for a short time, which gives it a mobility ability to move from a small puddle that is about to dry up to a puddle with abundant water. Second, it rains from time to time in the areas where the Pu'er tree frog lives, which allows the ground to constantly form puddles of water for tadpoles to inhabit.
In addition to being more drought-tolerant, another "stunt" of the "unlucky egg" is to grow and develop faster than the average tadpole. The first week after the egg becomes a tadpole can grow hind legs, the second week it can grow forelimbs, and in another four or five days or so it can leave the water. This allows most Pu-erh tree frog tadpoles to "outperform" the speed at which puddles dry up in time.
The genus Zhangixalus, where the Pu'er tree frog is located, is named after the surname of Zhang Yaping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in tribute to his contributions to biodiversity and evolutionary biology.
What is more interesting is that the Zhang's tree frog belongs to the frog world "giant country", the genus currently contains 36 species, its size is larger in the tree frog, most of the species of individuals are larger than 50 mm, the female frog is generally around 120 mm or even larger. It is found in East Asia and the northern part of the Indochina Peninsula. The brown-folded tree frog introduced earlier and the Pu'er tree frog introduced in this issue are among the members of this group of "giant frogs".
Fan Yi is an ecological photographer. He has won the Grand Prize of the International Garden Photographer Annual Competition for 4 consecutive years and the first prize in the wild animal and plant category of the first China Eco-Photography Competition in 2018. He is committed to photographing the cultural landscape and biodiversity of western China, especially in Yunnan.
Coordinator: Lian Huiling
Character arrangement: Tamoto
Poster Design: Zheng Biyin
"""Poke map into the special topic "《