#mini frogs

[stickyfrogs]

Jens has gathered all the Mini Frogs today to send Big Congratulations to @markscherz from all the Stickyfrogs! @markscherz is a Very Awesome Herpetologist, Evolutionary Biologist and FROG WIZARD who you might know for the exquisitely named Mini ature, Mini mum, and Mini scule!

Mark has been awarded a €1.5 Million European Research Commission Starting Grant for his project GEMINI: The Genomics of Miniaturisation in Vertebrates! Read more here and here! Congratulations Mark! 🐸

[markscherz]

I heard that the minis have been dethroned as smallest! Is this true?!

Mini were never the smallest frogs, just among the smallest in the world. I myself have described smaller Stumpffia species. But indeed, Brachycephalus pulex seems to have taken the crown for the title of smallest frog in the world, by a small but robust margin. I think it will be some time before this new record is broken.

[sleepybobeepy]

I made periwinkle and fuchsia friendship necklaces!!!!!!🩷🩵

[markscherz]

This isn’t a question I just wanted to thank you for your service, if I have the right Mark Scherz.

Hm. I lied. Question: do you have plans to name more frogs in the future. Please say yes.

It was my great pleasure. I get to take credit for coming up with the names, but the frogs themselves were really discovered by my colleagues, and it was a large team effort to get them described. Of course, I was very glad that they appreciated and supported the humorous name suggestions as well. Working with such wonderful people to describe these remarkable tiny frogs was one of the absolute highlights of my career. And I have been just overwhelmed with how well the names have been received by the world.

To-date I have described 120 new species. My colleagues and I are constantly working on taxonomic revisions. I have several new species of frogs (and reptiles) in the pipeline. You can keep track of this tolerably well on the publication page of my website.

[markscherz]

Hello! we've been doing a couple of lessons on classification recently, and i told my teacher about your genus of mini frogs. she was delighted and they have now been added to her powerpoint :)

I like to think of them as everyone's genus Mini. We all need a bit of a laugh sometimes. Things are always much too serious, especially in jargon-rich fields like taxonomy. It's helpful to lighten the mood. And perhaps if we all think of them as ours, perhaps we will be better at ensuring their future.

[markscherz]

Did you know you get a shout out on TreeApp?

Oh wow, I didn’t! But I really wish it credited my colleagues, too! It was a team effort, I just led the sortie.

[markscherz]

u probably know this but i find it really funny that youve named frogs in a comedic way and your last name is Scherz (german for joke)

You know, after a childhood of having people joking about my joke of a name, there was some righteous glory in being able to put the name to such good use.

[markscherz]

If you were to find and describe more species belonging to the genus mini, would their names also be built like that? Do you have ideas for that or would that come to you when finding a new species and you'd be like "ah yes this seems like a Mini Van" or something?

If it were me in charge, then yes, absolutely they would be more puns.

I am intentionally mum on the topic of what a future potential species would be named. But if someone at BMW wants to sponsor my research in exchange for a species being named after the Mini Cooper, I would sell out in a heartbeat.