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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - More than a hundred species of tiny land-breeding frogs in the Caribbean evolved from a single South American species that probably hitched a ride on a raft of vegetation and washed up on an island beach, according to scientists who spent decades collecting tissues from the colorful hoppers.
After years of field research in dense rain forests and remote caves to catalog and collect specimens of different frogs, recent advances in genetic technology enabled researchers to compare their DNA. What they found suggests a sea voyage by an egg-laying South American frog some 30 to 50 million years ago probably led to most of the Caribbean's terrestrial frogs.
"Nothing in the anatomy of these animals told any expert who has studied them over the last century that they were actually close relatives," biologist Blair Hedges, who directed the genetic research, said Saturday from his office at Pennsylvania State University.
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