COOL:New frog species discovered in New Jersey, New York!!

A Rutgers researcher and a team of coauthors have discovered a new species of frog that had been hiding in plain sight along the east coast, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The Atlantic Coast leopard frog makes its home in the Meadowlands, the Great Swamp and wetlands along the Jersey Shore and up and down the I-95 corridor.

"The discovery of a new frog species from the urban Northeast is truly remarkable,” said Jeremy Feinberg, a doctoral candidate in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, who said the discovery “was really an accident.”

Feinberg was studying the disappearance of another species, the southern leopard frog, on Long Island several years ago when he came across a chorus of frogs on Staten Island. A colleague noticed something different about them, he said.

“Frogs have a very particular type of call that doesn’t really vary within the species. If you’re in Florida, California, New Jersey — if it’s the same species, you’ll hear that call,” Feinberg said. “Pretty much within 10 seconds of hearing the calling (on Staten Island), we said, ‘Something is really weird here.’

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[link to www.nj.com]