I want you to picture the most organized person
you know. Oh, I know exactly the type. Right.
The kind of person who color codes their bookshelf,
has a specific drawer just for batteries, and
never, ever has a mispile. No junk drawer whatsoever.
Exactly. And that is, I think, how we usually
imagine science. Yeah, that's the ideal. Specifically,
the field of taxonomy, you know, the science
of naming things. We imagine it as this rigid,
Latin filled world where absolutely everything
has a perfect, permanent place. A place for everything
and everything in its place. That is definitely
what we strive for. Right. But then you open
the file for today's subject and you see something
that honestly, it looks like a clerical error.
Or maybe a bad joke. Yeah. You see the scientific
name of an animal, but the first part of the
name, the genus, is sitting there inside double
quotation marks. Actual air quotes on the official
scientific record. It's like walking into a hospital
and seeing a guy wearing a badge that says surgeon
in quotation marks. Yeah. You immediately turn
around. You completely run away. You think, okay,
I am absolutely not letting that guy operate
on me. And honestly, that instinct is pretty
correct here. In this case, those quotation marks
are doing a massive amount of heavy lifting.
Yeah. They're this tiny piece of punctuation
that represents about 80 years of confusion,
debate, and essentially scientific shrugging.
And that is our mission for this deep dive. We
are looking at a frog technically called Hyla
nice fori. Well, Hyla in quotes. Right. It's
also known perhaps incorrectly, which we'll get
to, as the Colombian backpack frog. And we are
going to unpack why a frog collected way back
in the 1940s is currently sitting in what I can
only really describe as taxonomic purgatory.
It really is a ghost story. It's a detective
story and a lesson in how messy science can actually
be all rolled into one little amphibian. We've
got the files right here. We're pulling from
scientific classification records, IUCN conservation
data, and taxonomic studies that span from 1970
all the way to 2017. A huge timeline. It is.
And the headline here isn't just that we can't
find the frog in the wild today. It's that even
when we had the frog in a jar, we apparently
had no idea what we were looking at. That's the
crux of it. It completely challenges the whole
idea that once a species is discovered and named,
the book is closed. Right. In this case, the
book was never really finished. So let's start
with the air quotes. Hyla, nice for you. Visually
on the page, it's Hyla. H -Y -L -A, surrounded
by quotes. Now, I did a little digging, and hyla
seems like the John Smith of frog names. It's
everywhere. That is a very fair assessment. Hyla
is the type genus for the family hylidae. So
if you close your eyes and picture a generic
tree frog. Green stins, sticky toe pads. Exactly.
Sitting on a leaf. You're picturing a hyla. But
for a massive chunk of herpetological history,
hyla was essentially a wastebasket taxon. A wastebasket
taxon? That sounds incredibly unscientific. Please
tell me that's not the official term. Well, it
is an informal term, but every taxonomist knows
exactly what it means. It's a dumping ground.
If you found a tree frog and it didn't fit into
the more specialized groups, like it wasn't weird
enough or distinct enough, you just chucked it
into hyla until you figured it out. So it literally
is... The junk drawer. It's the junk drawer of
the amphibian world. I love that analogy because
I absolutely have that drawer in my kitchen.
It's got, you know, a screwdriver, some old soy
sauce packets and a battery I'm terrified to
touch. Exactly. And Hyla is that drawer. But
in the case of our frog. The quotes add an extra
layer of we know this is wrong. The quotes are
a formal admission by the scientific community
that says, look, we know this frog doesn't actually
belong in the Hyla drawer. It doesn't fit the
definition at all. Yeah. But we don't have a
better drawer for it yet. So we're just parking
it here. So it's a placeholder. It's the scientific
equivalent of writing to be determined on a name
tag. Precisely. The American Museum of Natural
History's database uses this format. They're
effectively saying, park this species here, but
don't get comfortable. It's going to move as
soon as we figure out what it actually is. But
here is where the story gets really messy. Because
before it was parked in this junk drawer, with
the air quotes, it actually had a very specific,
very confident identity. It did. We called it
the Colombian backpack frog. Right. And that
common name isn't just a cute label. It paints
a very vivid picture of its biology. It does.
Backpack frog. Now, I'm assuming they aren't
carrying tiny hiking gear or, you know, little
frog maps. No camping gear. The backpack refers
to a really specific reproductive strategy. These
frogs originally belonged to a family called
Hemiphractidae, specifically the genus Cryptobotrychus.
Cryptobotrychus. That sounds extremely metal.
It translates to hidden frog. But the fascinating
thing about this group is the mothers. The females
carry their eggs exposed on their backs. Exposed.
Yeah. They don't have a pouch like a kangaroo
or even like some other frogs where the skin
completely grows over the eggs. The eggs are
just stuck right to the skin on the back, almost
in like a honeycomb pattern. That is wild. So
they are literally backpacking their kids around
the forest, keeping them safe from predators
in the water. Exactly. It's a high -investment
strategy. You carry the kids with you. And when
the specific frog, our quoted Hyla nice foray,
was first described by researchers Cochran and
Going back in 1970, they looked at the specimen
and said, aha. Aha, this is a backpack frog.
Right. They said this looks like a Cryptobotrychus.
And they formally named it Cryptobotrychus nicefori.
So in 1970, the case was completely closed. It
was a backpack frog, carries eggs on its back.
The experts had spoken. For almost 40 years,
yes, that was the accepted reality. If you opened
a textbook or a field guide in 1990, that is
exactly what you would see. But then comes the
year 2009. The plot twist. A group of researchers
in Fonte Rivero, Rojas -Rinjayak, and Barrio
Amoros decided to do some spring cleaning in
the frog archives. Okay. They weren't satisfied
with the surface -level look. They conducted
a detailed morphological study. Now, when you
say morphological, we aren't just talking about,
is it green or brown? No, we were going deep.
They were looking at skeletal structures. They
were looking at the skull. And specifically,
they were looking at something called vomerine
teeth. Wait, vomerine teeth? Are those the teeth
on the roof of the mouth? Correct. Frogs have
teeth. which always surprises some people. Don't
get a little terrifying. But the arrangement
of those teeth and the shape of the skull bones
are very conservative traits. Meaning they don't
change much? Exactly. They don't change easily
over evolution. And what they found was that
nice fory... had a skull structure and dentition
that was completely different from the backpack
frogs. So despite looking like a backpack frog
on the outside, the bones told a totally different
story. Exactly. It lacked the key physical characteristics
of the family hemiphractidae. A backpack frog
family has a very specific skull shape to support
their lifestyle. This frog just didn't have it.
So the Colombian backpack frog is not a backpack
frog. Technically, no. The 2009 study provided
solid evidence that it actually belongs to the
family Hyalidae. It's a true tree frog. Okay,
hold on. This implies a pretty massive airbag
in 1970. How do you mistake a tree frog for a
backpack frog? Did the original scientists just
not look close enough? Or were they just guessing?
It's less about negligence and more about a concept
called convergence. Sometimes nature solves problems
in very similar ways. Okay. Two unrelated frogs.
might look similar. They might have similar body
shapes, similar skin textures, simply because
they live in similar environments. It's like
how a dolphin and a shark look similar but aren't
actually related. I see. So in 1970, without
doing the deep bone analysis, they saw a frog
that looked like a backpack frog and just filed
it away. Right. But when the 2009 team looked
at the vomerine teeth and the cranial crests,
they realized this frog was an imposter. It didn't
fit the Hemiphractidae blueprint at all. So they
kicked it out of the club. Hand over your backpack,
you're out. Immediate eviction. They moved it
to the family Hylidae. They actually suggested
it might belong to a genus called Hylocertus,
which are these really beautiful stream -breeding
crogs. But here is the catch. They weren't 100
% sure. Why not? If they could see the bones,
why couldn't they match it? Because it had a
mix of traits. It looked a bit like Hylocertus,
but not enough to be absolutely certain. And
in taxonomy, if you aren't certain, you don't
commit. So let me just get this timeline straight.
In 2009, they realize it's in the wrong family.
They take away its backpack title. But because
they aren't sure exactly which tree frog genus
it belongs to, they just throw it back into the
generic wastebasket of Hyla and slap quotation
marks on it. That is exactly what happened. It's
an orphan of classification. It was evicted from
one home, but hasn't been given the keys to the
new one yet. That's disturbingly bureaucratic.
It's like finding out your dog isn't a golden
retriever, it's actually a wolf. But until we
figure out what kind of wolf, we're just going
to call it dog with air quotes and hope for the
best. Essentially, yes. And this brings up a
really important point about how science actually
works. We often think of taxonomy as this dusty,
static library where once a name is written down,
it's etched in stone forever. Right, like it's
a finished encyclopedia. But it's remarkably
fluid. It changes as our tools, like better microscopes
or DNA analysis, improve over time. But here's
the thing that totally blows my mind about this
reexamination in 2009. We are talking about looking
at the specimen, looking at its bones. But what
specimen are they actually looking at? This is
the part that usually shocks people outside of
biology. We are talking about the holotype. OK,
define that for us, because it sounds like a
sci -fi term, the holotype. A holotype is the
single physical specimen that was used to originally
describe and name a new species. It is the gold
standard, the reference meter stick. Okay. If
you want to know what a Tyrannosaurus rex is,
you compare your bones to the type specimen.
So there is one master frog somewhere. Exactly.
For Hyland Neisfieri, the entire species profile.
Everything we know, the name, the classification,
the reclassification, the controversy is based
entirely on the holotype. Which was collected
when? In the 1940s. So just so I'm completely
clear on this, we have one frog, one single frog
in a jar of alcohol collected 80 years ago. And
that is the only hard evidence we have that this
species even exists. That's it. It's known only
from that single solitary record. That is incredible.
I mean, think about the detective work involved
there. In 2009, those researchers didn't go out
into the jungle and find a new population. They
went to a museum shelf. Right. They pulled down
a jar that had been sitting there for decades,
looked at the same frog everyone else had looked
at, and said, hey, everyone else is wrong. It
really highlights the value of these museum collections.
I think people generally see museums as just
display cases for the public field trips and
dusty dinosaur skeletons. But the back rooms
are basically time machines. That jar is absolutely
a time capsule. Because that frog was preserved,
scientists decades later could ask new questions.
It proves that science corrects itself even when
absolutely no new data is collected from the
wild. The data was just sitting there. Sitting
on the shelf the whole time, just waiting for
someone to look at it with fresh eyes. And maybe
a better knowledge of vomerine teeth. But it
does beg the obvious question. Why haven't we
found anymore? I mean, 1940 was a very long time
ago. We've had men on the moon since then. We've
invented the Internet. We have mapped the entire
globe with satellites. Why hasn't anyone found
another hyla nice fori? Well, this takes us from
the dusty shelves of a museum to the very real.
Very complicated geography of the Columbian Andes.
Where exactly was this one lonely frog actually
found? The records place it in the border region
between the departments of Boyaca and Casanare.
This is the eastern slope of the Andes, dropping
down toward the Orinoco Basin. Okay. It's a transition
zone, incredibly biodiverse, lush, rugged terrain.
So we know where it lived. Why can't we just
go back and check under the exact same leaf?
Two main reasons. The environment and the human
element. Let's start with the environment. The
specific type locality, the exact spot where
the holotype was found, has suffered extensive
habitat loss. So the forest might simply not
be there anymore. Right. If you go to the exact
coordinates today, you're likely to find agriculture,
pasture land for cattle, or roads. The specific
microhabitat where that one frog lived might
be totally on. But forests are big. Surely it
didn't live on just one single acre. If it was
there, it must be in the surrounding hills, right?
Theoretically, yes. The IUCN assessment notes
that suitable habitat does remain nearby. It's
not all scorched earth. There are still patches
of cloud forest and foothill forest in that region.
So there's hope. The frog could have just moved
next door. So why aren't we looking there? That
brings us to the second and honestly the more
significant obstacle, security. Security. You
mean like restricted areas? I mean geopolitical
conflict. The region between Boyacá and Casanare
has historically been a very difficult area regarding
internal conflict in Colombia. Ah, I see. The
IUCN report is very explicit about this. It states
that no recent surveys have been conducted, specifically
because of security problems. This isn't just
about difficult terrain. It's about basic safety
for the researchers. That's a sobering reality
check. We often think of biology as this pure,
unhindered exploration, like Darwin on the Beagle,
just wandering around looking at finches. But
you're saying that politics and war create actual
blind spots in our scientific understanding.
Completely. Field biology is a human endeavor.
If a region is dangerous for humans, the biodiversity
of that region becomes a black box. We simply
cannot go there to look. There are vast swaths
of the Amazon and the Andes that are scientifically
dark because they are geopolitically hot. But
wait, can't we use technology? Why do we need
to physically send a person there? Can't we use
drones or satellite imagery or those eDNA sensors
to find these things without risking people?
It's a great question, but for frogs, it's really
tough. Satellites can show us forest cover, but
they cannot show us a two -inch frog hiding under
a bromeliad. That makes sense. And while environmental
DNA sampling water to see what lives there is
getting much better, you still need someone to
physically go to the stream to collect the water.
So there really is no substitute for boots on
the ground. Not yet. To find a cryptic species
that hasn't been seen in 80 years, you need a
herpetologist with a headlamp literally crawling
through the mud at night. And right now, that
is just too risky in that specific valley. It
creates this immense void on the map. The frog
might be thriving. It might be everywhere in
that specific valley singing every single night.
But because it's unsafe for us, the frog remains
a ghost. Exactly. But there was a glimmer of
hope mentioned in the 2017 assessment. It noted
that there were plans for a revisit. Oh, really?
Yeah. This suggests that as the political situation
in Colombia stabilizes and changes, the scientific
community is ready to pounce. They haven't given
up. They know the habitat's there. They know
the frog should be there. They're just waiting
for the window of opportunity to open. This leads
us to the official status of the frog. If you
look it up on the IUCN Red List, which acts as
the global report card for extinction risk...
What does it actually say? Is it extinct? Is
it endangered? It is neither. Its status is data
deficient. Data deficient. That sounds so bureaucratic.
Like a clerical error again. It does. But it's
a critically important distinction. Extinct means
we are sure it's gone. Endangered means we have
data showing the numbers are actively dropping.
Data deficient means we simply do not know. It's
a shrug, a giant scientific shrug. A very worried
shrug. It's a question mark, not a period. The
IUCN is saying we cannot assess the risk because
we have absolutely no information. This frog
exists in a state of quantum uncertainty. So
it's basically Schrodinger's frog. Precisely.
It could be extinct, wiped out by that habitat
loss in the 50s and 60s, or it could be perfectly
safe, hiding in the foliage in a zone where no
biologist dares to tread. And the stakes are
incredibly high with that label, right? Because
data deficient feels like a trap. It is a trap.
Conservation funding usually goes to the critically
endangered. Yeah. If you can prove an animal
is about to die out, you can get money to save
it. You can launch a campaign. Save the panda.
Save the rhino. But you can't launch a save the
hyla, nice furry campaign if you can't even prove
it's in danger or that it's even there. Exactly.
Right. That's the tragedy of the data deficient
label. Yeah. These species often just fall through
the cracks. They're the silent extinctions. They
might disappear before we ever even get the chance
to give them a proper name without quotation
marks. So what does this all mean for us? For
the person listening right now who might just
be curious about nature, we've got a frog found
once in the 40s. It was mislabeled as a backpack
frog. Then in the 2000s, scientists looked at
the jar again and said, nope, not a backpack
frog, and moved it to a temporary shelter called
Hyla. And now it's hidden behind a veil of security
issues in Colombia. I think the big takeaway
here is that science is not a static encyclopedia
of facts. We tend to teach science in schools
as a collection of known things. Photosynthesis
works like this. Gravity works like that. Here
are the species of the world. Right. We treat
it like a finished book. Here is the answer key.
But this story shows that science is a dynamic,
messy process. It's full of revision, waiting,
and correction. It reminds us that there are
still massive blank spots on our map and in the
library of life. We think we've categorized the
world, but we have jars on shelves that are mislabeled.
And forests we haven't stepped foot in for 80
years. It's extremely humbling. It makes you
realize how much we still have to learn about
even the things we think we have on record. Absolutely.
And if I can leave you with one specific thought
that keeps me up at night regarding this frog.
Oh, please do. I love the things that keep experts
up at night. Think about the name again. It was
originally called a backpack frog. We know backpack
frogs carry eggs on their backs. That is their
entire reproductive strategy, is how they survive.
Right. That was the whole reason for the original
name. It looked like it did that. But the 2009
study proved it is not a backpack frog. It's
a hylid. Most hylids, tree frogs, lay eggs in
water. They find a pond, they lay eggs, they
leave. Okay, so it probably just lays eggs in
a pond. Maybe. But remember, the original scientists
were smart people. They saw something in that
frog's shape -wide hips, maybe, or a certain
back structure that made them genuinely think
backpack. What if it does do something weird?
Oh, I see where you're going with this. We have
never seen a living Hylinis fori. We have never
seen its eggs. We have never seen its tadpoles.
We have literally no biography for this animal.
We have a name in quotes and a jar of alcohol,
but we are completely missing the life history.
Exactly. We have a creature that we named after
a behavior, carrying a backpack of eggs, that
it likely does not do. So the real question is,
what does it do? Does it lay eggs in streams,
in ponds? Does it have some other totally unique
way of caring for its young that we've never
seen, which tricked the original scientists into
thinking it was a backpack frog? That is a haunting
thought. Somewhere in a forest in Colombia, there
might be a frog doing something completely unique
with its eggs. Something that could rewrite the
textbooks on tree frogs. And we have absolutely
no idea. And until we can safely go back there,
it remains a mystery inside quotation marks.
Well, on that note, we are going to wrap up this
deep dive. It's a great reminder that sometimes
the most interesting things in the record books
aren't the bold facts, but the punctuation marks
that suggest we don't know the whole story. Always
check the footnotes. Thank you for exploring
the unknown with us today. And to you listening,
next time you see a typo or a weird punctuation
mark, don't just gloss over it. Dig a little
deeper. You never know what kind of mystery might
be hiding in the quotes. Catch you next time.