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In New York City – in the midst of some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers – and within view of the Statue of Liberty, scientists have found a new frog species.

While discovering new species in remote rainforests is common, finding this one in the ponds and marshes of Staten Island, mainland New York, and New Jersey was a big surprise to the scientists from Rutgers University, UCLA, UC Davis, and the University of Alabama who worked together to make the discovery .

The yet unnamed frog – which biologists historically mistook for a more widespread variety of the leopard frog -- may even extend into parts of Connecticut and extreme northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers believe that these are likely the same leopard frogs that completely disappeared from Long Island and other parts of the area over the last few decades.

“It is very surprising for a new species like this to have been unrecognized in this area until now,” said Rutgers doctoral candidate and guest researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory Jeremy Feinberg, who made the initial discovery. “Their naturally limited range coupled with recent unexplained disapperances from places like Long Island underscores the importance of this discovery and the value that conservation efforts might have in the long-term survival of this urban species."

In newly released research, available online in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, scientists used mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data to compare the new frog to all other leopard frog species in the region and determined that it is an entirely new species, soon to be named by the researchers. The wetland species likely once lived on Manhattan, and though it’s now only known to live in a few nearby locations, Yankee Stadium would probably be the bull’s-eye of a target drawn around its current image.

Feinberg, co-author of the study, is working on his doctoral thesis in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He was doing research on the alarming decline of leopard frogs in the wetlands of New York and New Jersey when he noticed that the regional leopard frogs displayed unusual behaviors and peculiar croaks. Instead of the "long snore" or "rapid chuckle" he heard from other leopard frogs, this frog had a short, repetitive croak.

“When I first heard these frogs calling, it was so different, I knew something was very off,” Feinberg said. “It’s what we call a cryptic species: one species hidden within another because we can’t tell them apart by looking. But thanks to molecular genetics, people are really picking out species more and more that would otherwise be ignored.”

To find out if his hunch was right, Feinberg developed a partnership with Cathy Newman, a geneticist who was completing a master’s degree in genetics at the University of Alabama.