While conducting transects in a privately protected forest reserve in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, as part of his research on biodiversity in cacao plantations and nearby remnant forests, Holden’s team encountered the Leucostethus bilsa frog. The discovery expands the range for the critically endangered dart frog and points to the importance of small forest reserves for the conservation of forest-dependent amphibians, he reported in Checklist, the Journal of Biodiversity Data. Read the article

“Support from the ARCS Foundation made this research possible and allowed me to hire a field assistant, which was crucial during the fieldwork portion of this project,” said Holden, who received Honoluluʻs 2022 Ellen M. Koenig ARCS Award in botany. The seven-month sampling effort comprised 298 survey-hours during wet and dry seasons across 32 sites. The ARCS award augmented a Fulbright research stipend for Holden’s PhD research, which uses amphibians as an indicator species to gauge the impact of monoculture plantations and environmental stressors on ecosystem diversity.