Conservationists say it's high time to consider whether synthetic biology will solve some of the huge problems that beset endangered species, or bring new problems. It just might do both.

"Synthetic biology brings with it a powerful attraction, causing biology to veer towards engineering with its inherent approach of human problem solving," three experts on biodiversity and conservation say in this week's issue of PLOS Biology. "It may prove to be a cure for certain wicked problems. But we suggest that now is the time to consider whether synthetic biology may be a wicked solution, creating problems of its own, some of which may be undesirable or even unacceptable in the area of biodiversity conservation."

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The PLOS Biology essay was written by Kent Redford of Archipelago Consulting, William Adams of the University of Cambridge, and Georgina Mace of University College London's Center for Biodiversity and Environment Research. The three conservationists are the organizers of a conference on synthetic biology, due to take place next week in Cambridge, England.

What is synthetic biology?
Synthetic biology takes advantage of genetic engineering to tweak existing organisms for new purposes — for example, strains of E. coli bacteria that live on coffee, or produce better biofuels.

More recently, researchers have talked about reshaping the genome of one species so that it reflects the traits of a closely related extinct or disappearing species — such as the American chestnut, the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian thylacine or the Siberian woolly mammoth. Last month, that kind of de-extinction was discussed during a widely watched conference in Washington.

This month's conference takes a closer look at the scientific and ethical issues relating to conservation. Would de-extinction truly bring back the species that were wiped out, or will they actually be novel species, even alien species? How will revived species interact with the other species that have taken their place? Will we actually value the "natural" world less, because we assume de-extinction can bring back our favorites? What happens if synthetic life evolves in unforeseen ways? What's the implication of having patented life forms in the wild?

"A serious need exists for wider discussion of the relationship between synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation, and what choices society can and should make," the three experts say. But that poses a huge challenge, because many people haven't even heard of synthetic biology yet.

Plateau in awareness
The latest in a series of surveys conducted for the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars suggests that public awareness about the issue is plateauing. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said that they had heard nothing at all about synthetic biology, which is about the same level of non-awareness found during the center's previous survey in 2010.

Lack of public awareness makes it difficult to conduct a wide-ranging debate over a technology's pros and cons, said Eleonore Pauwels, a research associate at the Wilson Center. "It is still at the stage of hype, and promises, and new funding coming in," she told NBC News. "When you don't have a lot of information, you only have the buzz or the hype."

The survey also found that 61 percent supported continuing research in synthetic biology, while 34 percent wanted such research banned until its implications and risks were better understood. "The more information you give to people, the more questions they're going to ask, and the debate becomes more complex," Pauwels said.

The situation is likely to change once synthetic-biology applications actually start hitting the market. Among the first applications are methods to produce flavors such as vanilla and saffron using genetically modified microbes. Another high-profile example is a project that uses genetically engineered yeast to produce artemisinic acid, the key ingredient for an anti-malaria drug.

"If they get the antimalarial drug out of clinical trial soon, it's going to refuel the interest in synthetic biology as a new way of manufacturing drugs," Pauwels said.

What about manufacturing mammoths? Is synthetic biology a technology whose time has come? Or should experiments on the bleeding edge of genetic engineering be put on hold for a while, as they were in the 1970s? Feel free to cast your vote in our unscientific survey, and voice your opinion in the comment space below.

More about synthetic biology:

• How synthetic biology will change us
• What to do about synthetic life?
• Cosmic Log archive on synthetic biology

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The Wilson Center's 2013 nationwide telephone survey on awareness and impressions of synthetic biology was conducted by Hart Research Associates from Jan. 10 to 14. Hart Research surveyed 804 adults, including 243 who use only a cell phone. At the 95 percent confidence level, the data's margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

 A rare species of fish described as “faceless and brainless” was among the unusual finds made by marine scientists off Britain’s coast, according to a Scottish government report published on Thursday.

The prehistoric amphioxus species, which grows to about two inches long and has no fins, was recorded off Orkney, part of the Northern Isles that lie off the far northern coast of mainland Scotland.

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The elusive fish is regarded as a modern representative of the first animals that evolved a backbone, the Scottish government said.

With a nerve cord down its back, it has no specific brain or face. According to The Scotsman newspaper, it has a translucent, fish-like body but has no true skeleton.

It is usually found buried in sand in shallow parts of temperate or tropical seas, the newspaper said. In Asia, the species is harvested commercially to use as food for pets.

Other rare finds from the marine surveys, which covered over 2,000 square miles, included giant mussels with shells measuring up to 18 inches and new communities of Northern Feather Star, a brightly colored species with 10 feather-like arms fanning out from a central disc, which were revealed off the Sound of Canna, near Skye.

The Scottish Government said the findings will further the country's knowledge of the biodiversity of its seas.

Scottish Natural Heritage and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University were among organizations that carried out the work.

Underwater video was shot and acoustic and 3D images were used in the surveys.

Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy with environmental campaign group WWF Scotland, added: “These surveys highlight that Scotland’s seas and coasts are home to a truly amazing range of weird and wonderful wildlife.

“By providing vital information on what lies beneath the waves, these surveys will help inform decisions on better ways to protect this important resource.”

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The individual scenes tell wonderful wildlife stories: A jaguar goes on the prowl during the night. An elephant takes a stroll through the jungle. A mountain gorilla strikes a pose with a baby on her back. But when you put together 52,000 of those hidden-camera scenes, you can see the bigger picture: The more territory you set aside for wild mammals, the more diversity you'll find. And soon you may be able to contribute to that bigger picture as well.

The tens of thousands of "Candid Camera" moments come from the first worldwide camera-trap mammal study, conducted by a consortium known as the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network, or TEAM Network. In a study published by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, scientists documented 105 species that showed up in nearly 52,000 images from seven protected areas in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

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The camouflaged cameras were designed to snap pictures when they detect the heat signature of an animal nearby — whether it's a mouse opossum weighing just an ounce, or an African elephant weighing more than four tons. Wild creatures weren't the only things that were caught on camera: The traps also picked up pictures of tourists or poachers who happened to walk by.

At each of the sites, 60 camera traps were set up for a month, with each camera covering a 2-square-kilometer area. Images for the TEAM project were collected between 2008 and 2010. The pictures showed plenty of cute animals, including giant anteaters, a curious chimpanzee, tapirs, jaguars and cougars. But the study's lead author, Jorge Ahumada of Conservation International, said the cuteness of the pictures was not the focus of the project.

"We're really concerned not about a particular species, but about the health of an ecosystem," he told me today.

Camera traps have been used before for a wide range of species-specific projects, including studies of shimmying bears, seldom-seen leopards and extremely rare rhinos. But the TEAM scientists are more interested in conducting a wider census of species in protected areas around the world. The results could suggest particular locales where conservationists and policymakers should concentrate their efforts.

"Sometimes we operate in the dark, because we don't have a systematic global effort," Ahumada said.

The scientists have already found that mammalian species diversity is related to how much land is set aside for a protected area, as well as how fragmented the area is. The Central Suriname Nature Reserve in South America had the most species show up on camera (28), while Laos' Nam Kading National Protected Area in Southeast Asia had the least (13). In the Laotian reserve, not a single insect-eating mammal was seen.

"The results of the study are important in that they confirm what we suspected: Habitat destruction is slowly but surely killing our planet’s mammal diversity," Ahumada said in a news release. "We take away two key findings from this research. First, protected areas matter: The bigger the forest they live in, the higher the number and diversity of species, body sizes and diet types. Second, some mammals seem more vulnerable to habitat loss than others: Insect-eating mammals — like anteaters, armadillos and some primates, are the first to disappear — while other groups, like herbivores, seem to be less sensitive."

Ahumada told me that reduced biodiversity could have a big impact on other environmental issues as well, including climate change and Earth's carbon balance.

"Some scientists suggested not too long ago that if you remove mammals from forests ... you will shift the forest community toward trees that will have much less wood, much less density of carbon per unit weight. That's an unintended consequence of not paying attention to these animals and the whole ecosystem," he said.

He said the findings reported today were just "an initial snapshot" of species diversity in protected areas. "Now, for some of these sites, we have four or five years of data," he added. The TEAM Network has already expanded from seven to 17 sites, and it's aiming to have camera traps in 40 protected areas around the world by 2013. That will provide a regularly updated census of mammalian species in the world's hot spots for biodiversity.

And who knows? Maybe someday there'll be a hot spot near you. Ahumada said he and his colleagues are planning to make their image-analysis software available to the public, so that anyone with a camera trap can gather data about the creatures that pass by.

"Involving citizens in science is great," he said. "The more information we have, the more we know is happening."

More about biodiversity:

• More pictures from the camera-trap mammal study
• Tiger poachers caught on camera ... their own
• Biological gems found in the Philippines
• Search for 'biodiversity' on msnbc.com

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The TEAM Network is a partnership involving Conservation International, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The effort is partially funded by those institutions and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

In addition to Ahumada, the authors of "Community Structure and Diversity of Tropical Forest Mammals: Data from a Global Camera Trap Network" include Carlos E.F. Silva, Krisna Gajapersad, Chris Hallam, Johanna Hurtado, Emanuel Martin, Alex McWilliam, Badru Mugerwa, Tim O'Brien, Francesco Rovero, Douglas Sheil, Wilson R. Spironello, Nurul Winarni and Sandy J. Andelman.

TEAM's local partners in the study are Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA), Conservation International Suriname, Organization for Tropical Studies, Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, and Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation. The seven protected areas monitored for the study were Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Uganda), Udzungwa Mountains National Park (Tanzania), Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (Indonesia), Nam Kading National Protected Area (Laos), Central Suriname Nature Reserve (Suriname), Manaus (Brazil) and Volcan Barva Transect (Costa Rica). 

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Conservationists report that the Sambas Stream toad, one of their top 10 "lost" amphibian species, has been rediscovered in Malaysian Borneo 87 years after it was last sighted.

The find was made by scientists from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak who spent months looking for the toad in the remote Gunung Penrissen mountains of Western Sarawak, a natural boundary between Malaysia's Sarawak State and Indonesia's Kalimantan Barat Province on the island of Borneo. (Just writing those names makes me feel like Indiana Jones.)

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Conservation International reports that the initial search was fruitless — so the expedition team, led by Indraneil Das, moved up to higher elevations and resumed the hunt. Eventually there came a night when one of Das' graduate students, Pui Yong Min, spotted a small toad sitting 6 feet (2 meters) up a tree.

Das could hardly believe what he was seeing.

"Thrilling discoveries like this beautiful toad, and the critical importance of amphibians to healthy ecosystems, are what fuel us to keep searching for lost species," Das said in a news release from Conservation International.  "They remind us that nature still holds precious secrets that we are still uncovering, which is why targeted protection and conservation is so important. Amphibians are indicators of environmental health, with direct implications for human health. Their benefits to people should not be underestimated."

That's the whole idea behind the "Search for Lost Frogs" campaign, which was launched a year ago by Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's SSC Amphibian Specialist Group. The groups drew up a "Ten Most Wanted" list in hopes of inspiring researchers to intensify the search for amphibians that have not been seen for decades.

The Sambas Stream toad is also known as the Bornean rainbow toad, with the scientific name Ansonia latidisca. The long-legged, multicolored toad was described by European explorers in the 1920s, and was last seen in 1924. Das' team identified three individuals — an adult female, an adult male and a juvenile, ranging in size from roughly an inch to 2 inches (30 to 51 millimeters).

Each of the toads was found in a different mature tree, in a region of the Penrissen range that's outside Sarawak's system of protected areas. The precise location is being kept secret in hopes of keeping pet collectors from going after the rainbow toads.

The toads are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, and Conservation International said they may be eligible for protection under Sarawak's wildlife ordinances.

Conservation International's Robin Moore, an expert on amphibians, said he was amazed to hear of the discovery.

"When I saw an email with the subject 'Ansonia latidisca found' pop into my in-box, I could barely believe my eyes," he said in the CI announcement. "Attached was an image — proof in the form of the first-ever photograph of the colorful and gangly tree-dwelling toad. The species was transformed in my mind from a black-and-white illustration to a living, colorful creature.”

Moore said he considered it a privilege to be among the first to see the pictures of the toad.

"It is good to know that nature can surprise us when we are close to giving up hope, especially amidst our planet’s escalating extinction crisis," he said. "Amphibians are at the forefront of this tragedy, so I hope that these unique species serve as flagships for conservation, inspiring pride and hope by Malaysians and people everywhere."

The rainbow frog is the second of the "Ten Most Wanted" amphibians to be rediscovered. The first was the Rio Pescado stubfoot toad (Atelopus balios), a species native to Ecuador that is critically endangered.

Two down, eight to go ... the search continues.

More species lost and found:

• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• New species from New Guinea
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

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Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A captive male Darwin's frog coughed up ten babies Thursday at a zoo in Santiago, Chile, a milestone in a project to save the amphibians from extinction.

The vulnerable species is one of two members of the only genus on Earth that rears its young inside of its vocal sac, a job taken on by the males. 

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"They have a small opening below their tongue. … After [the eggs] hatch, he takes the tadpoles into his mouth and manipulates them through that opening and into his vocal sac," Danté Fenolio, a conservation scientist with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, explained to me today. 

"For about 60 days, they go all the way through to development inside his vocal sac. At that point when they are ready, fully developed, he coughs up fully formed miniatures of the adult."

Fenolio is working on a captive breeding project with the National Zoo and Universidad Catolica in Santiago to build a so-called assurance population of the frogs that can be released into the wild once, or if, environmental threats to their natural habitat are thwarted.

The babies coughed up Thursday are the second batch produced by the frogs, a sign that the project is meeting success. 

Froggy threats
The frogs are native to the southern temperate forests of Chile and Argentina, which have been isolated from the rest of the world since the dinosaur age due to a surrounding geography of mountains, desert and ocean. 

This region receives enough rainfall to classify as a rainforest, which makes it ideal for amphibians. But it's also ideal for vineyards and plantations of radiata pine, a fast-growing tree highly valued for the country's lumber and pulp and paper industries. 

"Those two things have driven a lot of these southern Chilean amphibians close to extinction," Fenolio said.

In addition, the chyrtrid fungus, which has devastated amphibian populations around the world, recently arrived to southern Chile and could easily wipe out populations there as it has elsewhere.

Yet another threat to some species of frogs in the region are invasive trout introduced to rivers and streams to support Chile's rising status as a world-class fly fishing destination. The trout eat tadpoles, though not those of the Darwin's frogs since they are safely inside dad's vocal sac. 

Assurance colonies
"It is a very complicated conservation landscape," said Fenolio, who hopes to secure funding to establish captive breeding populations for Chile's other endangered amphibians and build up assurance colonies.

"An assurance colony doesn't fix the problem in the wild. What you are trying to do is buy yourself some time," he explained.

While addressing some of the threats could be a decades-long process with tough battles against well-established industries, others are relatively simple and straightforward, albeit costly.

For example, populations of some amphibians such as the false mountain toad could be protected by eliminating invasive trout from a stream and putting in fish exclusion devices downstream from them.

"That's been done in before in various areas around the world and it would be a relatively simple effort," Fenolio said.

One more threat, though, looms on the horizon. The Chilean government recently approved the construction of a series of hydroelectric dams in the amphibian zone. The dams will bring inexpensive electricity, but they come at a cost.

"Whenever you put a dam in, the habitat behind it is flooded and destroyed," Fenolio noted. "These construction projects will impact the amphibian populations of southern Chile negatively, there's no question."

More stories about frogs: 

• Fungus hitting frogs hard 
• Scant froggy finds spark worries 
• Froggy finds raise hope for Haiti 
• Social networking to save frogs 

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

 

 

 

Budding naturalists armed with a camera and an Internet connection can help save the world's frogs from extinction thanks to a new social-networking site that links up information on their froggy finds with scientists who are racing to conserve the amphibians.

Of the 6,814 known species of amphibians, about 2,000 are considered threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, climate change, the chyrtrid fungus, and other factors. In the last two decades, 168 are thought to have gone extinct. 

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To participate in the Global Amphibian Blitz, citizen scientists take a photo of a frog they encounter in their backyard, at the park, on a hike, or anywhere else one leaps into view. They can upload it to the iNaturalist.org website along with the date and GPS location (there's an iPhone app for that).

Once posted, the species is identified by scientists who are keen to learn the whereabouts and population status of amphibians.

"By being in the right place at the right time and armed with a camera, amateurs can provide information that scientists could never dream of collecting on their own," Scott Loarie, co-director of iNaturalist and post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, said in a news release.

Since the Global Amphibian Blitz was launched May 25, reports on more than 290 of the known species of amphibians have been posted to the website.

Project scientists view the social-networking site as a wise use of limited conservation funds to locate rare species and collect data on out-of-range occurrences. The precise whereabouts of the rare frogs will be closely guarded by the scientists to thwart collection by wildlife traders.

This is the latest campaign to collect data on the world's amphibians. The Search for Lost Frogs, a global effort to account for amphibians feared threatened with extinction, wrapped up in 2010 with mixed results — several frogs thought already lost were re-discovered, but many more appear gone forever.

To learn more abouth the Global Amphibian Blitz, check out the video below.

In addition to iNaturalist, the Global Amphibian Blitz is sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley's AmphibiaWeb; Amphibian Ark; the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; the Amphibian Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission; and the Center for Biological Diversity.

More about frog conservation:

• Scant froggy finds spark worries
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

 

Researchers say they've seen nine potentially new species in the waters surrounding one of the world's most exotic locales, the island of Bali — but they've also seen the damage that humans can do to a once-pristine environment.

The good-news, bad-news report comes from Conservation International, a nonprofit group that has been cataloging new species and the perils they face for decades. Over the past three years, Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program has documented 953 species of fish and 397 species of coral in Bali's reefs.

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The group is working with local partners at the request of the Bali provincial government and fisheries officials, who are looking for advice on how best to protect the region's marine riches.

"We carried out this present survey in 33 sites around Bali, nearly completing a circle around it, and were impressed by much of what we saw," Mark Erdmann, senior adviser for the CI Indonesia marine program, said in a news release. "There was a tremendous variety of habitats, surprisingly high levels of diversity, and the coral reefs appeared to be in an active stage of recovery from bleaching, destructive fishing and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks in the 1990s."

This year, a two-week survey identified eight species of fish and one species of coral that may be new to science, Conservation International said. Those species include two types of cardinalfish, two varieties of dottyfish, a sandperch, a fangblenny, a garden eel, a goby fish and a previously unknown type of bubble coral.

Check out this slideshow to see the marine menagerie.

Scientists have been tracking the health of Bali's coral reefs since those grim years of the 1990s. "Compared to 12 years ago, we observed an increase in healthy coral reef cover in the area surveyed, indicating a recovery phase. That is why it needs serious protection and management, to complete the revitalization," said Ketut Sarjana Putra, CI Indonesia's acting executive director.

As good as all this sounds, the researchers also saw causes for concern: During this year's two-week survey, divers spotted just three reef sharks and three Napoleon wrasse — which is about as many large reef predators as a diver would see in a healthy reef system during the course of a single dive. Plastic pollution was "omnipresent," Conservation International reported, and the team saw how fishing operations were encroaching on no-take areas in West Bali National Park.

The team recommended that the Bali government come up with a priority list for areas that need immediate protection. The experts also saw a need for better spatial planning to reduce the clash between fishing and marine tourism, for stronger commitment to enforcement and public funding for protected areas, and stricter measures to manage pollution from plastics, sewage and agricultural runoff.

"This RAP survey highlights how important these marine protected areas are to improving economic returns from marine tourism while also providing food security and ensuring the sustainability of small-scale artisanal fisheries,” Erdmann said in the news release.

More beauties from the search for new species:

• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Lost frogs found in Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• New species from New Guinea
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2009
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under .. underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

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Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Conservationists have rediscovered six species of frogs in Haiti, offering a ray of hope for the country on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that left it in shambles.

"I am very wary of highlighting frogs at this time in Haiti. Obviously the country has very pressing needs, but I think ultimately they are a symbol of something more hopeful," said Robin Moore, an amphibian expert with Conservation International who helped lead the expedition that found the frogs.

Among the highlights are a frog that calls like a ventriloquist that was last seen in 1991 and only known from a few individuals; a frog with unusually striking blue sapphire-colored eyes; and a frog that's the size of a grape, one of the smallest amphibians in the world. (Click through our slideshow featuring the cute little guys.)

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Remote forest refuges
"A common assumption about Haiti is that there is nothing left to save," Moore said in a news release announcing the frog rediscoveries. "That is not entirely true. There are biologically rich pockets of environmental health and natural wealth in Haiti."

That said, less than 2 percent of Haiti's original forest remains, and the freshwater ecosystems on which Haitians depend are mostly degraded, according to the conservationists.

Moore and colleague Blair Hedges from Pennsylvania State University led an expedition to the mountains of southwestern Haiti to look for long-lost frogs. Over the course of eight days, they scoured the trees, riverbeds and ground for amphibians. They found 25 unique species out of the country's 49 known native species, including six critically endangered species not seen in at least a decade.

"We were hopeful that we would find some amphibians," Moore told me. "I was extremely surprised at just how many we found of these critically endangered species."

He added that the discoveries serve as an incentive to keep conservation efforts alive in the struggling country.

"As long as we have a decent patch of forest left, we have something to protect and something to build on," Moore said. "You have opportunities for developing alternatives such as shade-grown coffee, which is a very attractive alternative to current cash crops."

Search for lost frogs
The announcement of the six rediscovered frogs comes on the heels of a Conservation International expedition to western Colombia that scared up three previously unknown frog species.

The Colombian species include a long-nosed beaked toad that can camouflage itself as a dead leaf, an only-somewhat-poisonous rocket frog with flashes of red on its legs, and a red-eyed frog that's so mysterious scientists don't know exactly how to classify it.

Conservation International's expeditions to Colombia and Haiti expeditions are part of the group's "Search for Lost Frogs" campaign, which was launched in the summer of 2010 to locate frog species that have not been seen for at least a decade and are feared to be extinct. Conservation International and its partners at the Amphibian Specialist Group of IUCN plan to launch a new campaign later this year.

More species lost and found:

• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• New species from New Guinea
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2009
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under .. underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).