Colorful Poison Frogs

Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great 1 to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests. This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a 2 source of diversity for the Amazon basin, one of the largest 3 of biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs 4 to the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the 5 forest itself. “Basically, the Amazon basin is a melting pot for South American frogs,” says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. “Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin, notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the 6. Adjacent regions have played a major role.”