A chocolate treefrog that looks like a Freddo. Burrowing frogs which live in trees. Long-nosed frogs named after Pinocchio. Frogs which go straight from egg to froglet without stopping at tadpole. And large treefrogs which can glide from tree to tree.
All these and many more are found only in Melanesia. This tiny region in the South Pacific is a global hotspot of cultural and biological diversity. And we still don’t know the full extent of its extreme biological riches.
Centred on the world’s largest tropical island, New Guinea, Melanesia is home to 534 types of frog. As our new research shows, that’s 7% of all the world’s frog species living on just 0.7% of the world’s land. And there are more to come. Almost 40% of these frogs have only been scientifically described in the last two decades.
