A team of scientists including a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) research associate announced the discovery of a new species of pale-gold colored frog from the cloud forests of the high Andes in Colombia. Its name,

Pristimantis dorado

, commemorates both its color (dorado means ‘golden’ in Spanish) and El Dorado, a mythical city of gold eagerly sought for centuries by Spanish conquistadores in South America.

• The extraordinarily diverse group to which the new species belongs, Pristimantis, includes 465 recognized species, 205 of them from Colombia.
• At seven-tenths of an inch long, the species is among the smaller species in the group. The largest species grow to be 2 inches in length.
• Males of many frog species advertise for females with distinctive calls produced by vocal sacs or vocal slits.
• Oddly, although the new species lacks these structures, males are still able to produce calls consisting of an irregularly pulsed series of clicks.
• The new species was found calling from bushes along a roadside at about 8,700 feet elevation near Chingaza National Park, roughly 10 miles east of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital and largest city.
• Its discovery so close to a metropolitan area of nearly 10 million inhabitants illustrates how much of the planet’s biodiversity remains to be discovered.