Caribbean Amphibians Started with a Single, Ancient Voyage on a Raft from South America

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Red frog from mountains of Haiti. Eleutherodactylus audanti from Massif de la Selle. Credit: Blair Hedges Penn State
Red frog from mountains of Haiti. Eleutherodactylus audanti, from Massif de la Selle. Credit: Blair Hedges, Penn State

Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands, including the coqui frogs of Puerto Rico, originated from a single frog species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30-to-50-million years ago, according to DNA-sequence analyses led by a research group at Penn State, which will be published in the 12 June 2007 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted in the journal's online early edition this week.


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