A new frog species, discovered in Ecuador, has been named after Academy Award-winning Hollywood Leonardo DiCaprio, owing to the Titanic star’s passionate work for the environment, according to a report in The Telegraph. The frog has been named Phyllonastes Dicaprioi and is one of the seven new species uncovered by researchers from Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity, the Catholic University of Ecuador, and the San Francisco University of Quito (USFQ).

“This study highlights the importance of protecting the unique habitats where these species live,” USFQ said in a statement.

The frog species named after the actor can be found in the Western Mountain Forest in the province of El Oro, Ecuador. It is small and brown with darker spots on its body with scientists stating that it lives 1,330 and 1,705 metres above sea level.

Mr DiCaprio is one of the biggest A-list celebrities from Hollywood that is actively into environmental causes. He founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 to raise awareness about environmental issues.

He also supported the closure of a controversial oil drilling project in Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park which prompted the scientists to honour the 50-year-old actor.

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In October last year, a new snake species discovered in the Himalayas was also named after Mr DiCaprio. Named ‘Anguiculus dicaprioi’, the snake species can be found between central Nepal to Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh.

The snake was first discovered by Virender Bhardwaj in the backyard of his home in the western Himalayas during the COVID-19 lockdown. He posted its pictures on social media, leading to lot of buzz online which resulted in a three-year-long investigation to identify the snake which resembled ‘Liopeltis rappi’ — a species known to be distributed in the eastern Himalayas.

Prior to Mr DiCaprio, a new species of snake was named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi after Harrison Ford, the Indiana Jones actor. In 2017, a pistol shrimp was named Synalpheus pinkfloydi in honour of the rock band by zoologist and Pink Floyd fan Dr Sammy de Grave.

Mumbai:

A new genus and snake species discovered in the Himalayas has been named after the Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio – the “Titanic” star who is also a passionate environmentalist, officials said on Tuesday.

The newly described snake species, ‘Anguiculus dicaprioi’ is distributed from central Nepal to Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh, whereas ‘Anguiculus rappii’ is distributed in Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh.

These snakes are mostly active from late May to August and are not found at other times of the year, nothing is known about the biology of the two species, and ‘Anguiculus rappii’ is rare and has not been recorded in the last couple of decades.

The snake was first found by Virender Bhardwaj in the backyard of his home in the western Himalayas during the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown.

He posted its pictures on social media, leading to a sensation – and a three-year-long investigation coupled with laborious research – to identify the snake which resembled ‘Liopeltis rappi’, a species known to be distributed in the eastern Himalayas.

However, the population from Himachal Pradesh differed from the true ‘Liopeltis rappi’ found in Sikkim in many aspects like the scales on the head and general colour patterns — which was confirmed by examining specimens from natural history museums across Europe, the US and even India.

Besides, the DNA sequences generated for this snake did not match any genus and the team included DNA and morphological data for other related species from all over Asia.

The complication of the molecular and morphological data suggested that the snake from HP is related to ‘Liopeltis rappi’ but differed in many aspects, to be called a new species, and both these belong to a new genus that is endemic to the Himalayas region.

A research paper was authored by Zeeshan A. Mirza of Max Planck Institute for Biology at Tubingen (Germany); Virender K. Bhardwaj and H. T. Lalremsanga of Mizoram University (India); Saunak Pal of the Newcastle University (UK); Gernot Vogel of the Society for Southeast Asian Herpetology(Germany); Patrick D. Cambell of the Natural History Museum (UK) and Harshil Patel of the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation (Mumbai, India).

The research paper was submitted early this year and published recently by Scientific Reports, an international peer-reviewed journal.

DiCaprio has been actively involved in creating awareness about global climate change, increased biodiversity losses and the impact of pollution on human health plus related issues.

“The specific epithet ‘dicaprioi’ is a patronym honouring Leonardo DiCaprio, an American actor, film producer, and environmentalist who has been actively involved in creating awareness about global climate change, increased biodiversity loss, and human health issues through pollution,” the report explained.

“The work not only resolved the status of the Himalayan species but also resolved a taxonomic confusion regarding the genera Liopeltis and Gongylosoma that lasted 180 years. The work provides a newly revised classification of these two genera that are distributed across Asia,” said a statement here.

The members of the genus Anguiculus are small and are currently known by two species and these snakes are found at elevations above 1500 meters across the Himalayas.

The authors said that the description of a new snake genus and species from Himachal Pradesh highlights the poor herpetofauna documentation of the western Himalayas.

Preliminary field surveys across Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand suggest that the region’s biodiversity has been grossly underestimated, and along with Jammu & Kashmir, remain the least explored for the herpetofauna biota they host.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)