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Date Published: 21/04/2022

ARCHIVED - Rare albino frog found in Alicante: first ever sighting on the Costa Blanca

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

There are only two other documented sightings of an alboni clawed frog in Spain: in Cádiz and Tarragona

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Rare albino frog found in Alicante: first ever sighting on the Costa Blanca

A rare albino frog has been spotted for the first time on the Costa Blanca, in the El Prado-Rodriguillo wetlands of Pinoso, Alicante province. There are only two other documented sightings in the country, with specimens catalogued in Cádiz and Tarragona.

The rare Pelophylax perezi specimen was found in the Medio Vinalopó region of the province by biologists Alba Navarro Lozano and José Carlos Monzó Giménez who discovered the albino frog in an old drainage ditch that had been restored and transformed into a watercourse by Pinoso's Department of the Environment through the construction of a small dam with a constant water flow.

The area is surrounded by reed beds creating a "paradise" for amphibians, viperine snakes, herons and fartet fish, also known as Spanish toothcarp.

Having established its habitat in a small hydraulic dam with little aquatic vegetation, the biologists were able to easily detect the frog's pigmentary anomaly and monitor the specimen from the larval stage to maturity after completing all the stages of metamorphosis.

The word albinism comes from the Latin word 'albus', which means white. It's a congenital condition characterised by the partial or complete absence of pigment so that skin, hair, plumage, scales, seeds or flowers lack colour and are more or less white.

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"In the case of our frog, it has a white colouring and red eyes," explained biologist Monzó, an expert in Management of Natural Spaces at Alicante University, adding that "red eyes are proof of albinism because there may be a case of an absence of melanin in the skin - white or yellow skin - but the eyes are not red and have a normal colour. In such cases it is leucism".

Albinism is a very rare phenomenon in the wild, according to the experts, affecting around only 0.1% of species, which is why the biologists' discovery has aroused great interest in the world of Herpetology: the branch of zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians.

"It must be borne in mind that albino amphibians do not usually survive for a long time or reach adulthood for different reasons," explained the researchers.

Their striking colour makes it almost impossible to go unnoticed by potential predators, so they are less inclined to search for food themselves. Albino amphibians also tend to have difficulties in thermoregulating their bodies and lack protection against solar radiation, meaning they are at a higher risk of suffering severe burns or developing skin infections.

In addition, the lack of ocular pigmentation causes a significant deficiency in the eyesight of reptiles and amphibians, an impairment that hinders their chances of finding food leading to death by starvation.

But the Pinoso albino frog has so far managed to overcome these and another kind of problem caused by humans.

"With the significant contamination of the area where it lived, due to a sewage spill that caused the mortality of a population of fartet along with other groups of aquatic fauna a year ago, it is incredible and almost impossible for it to have survived," said José Carlos Monzó.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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