Treasure of the month

March 2018

The frog with the hole in the head...

Our treasure of the month March is a hole-in-the-head frog, the Huia cavitympanum. It lives in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. It got its name because its eardrum is deeply recessed and transparent in the ear and it looks like it has a deep hole there. However, what is perhaps more special about it is its hearing ability, because it has been proven that the males call in the ultrasonic range and thus their hearing ability is also far beyond that of humans. Their tadpoles are highly adapted stream dwellers. They have developed a ventral suction cup that allows them to attach themselves to the rocky substrate with great force. This also allows them to live in rushing rapids where no other tadpole can otherwise hold on. These larvae were collected for LIB by Prof. Dr. Alexandre Haas (Department of Herpetology). As part of her master's thesis at LIB, Li Lin Gan scientifically studied the anatomy of the ventral sucker in the and published in 2015:

Gan, L. L., Hertwig, S. T., Das, I. and Haas, A. (2016), The anatomy and structural connectivity of the abdominal sucker in the tadpoles of Huia cavitympanum, with comparisons to Meristogenys jerboa (Lissamphibia: Anura: Ranidae). J Zoolog Syst Evol Res, 54: 46-59. doi:10.1111/jzs.12113.

More on the Herpetology Department at LIB: https://www.cenak.uni-hamburg.de/forschung/abteilungen/herpetologie.html

Photo: The eardrum of Huia cavitympanum from Borneo is deeply sunken in the ear. UHH/CeNak, Haas