Platymantis guppyi - The giant Solomon Island treefrog is distributed over a wide area of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. It is a small frog inhabiting the closed canopy of old growth rainforests. Most tree frogs descend to ground level for mating and spawning, but the Solomon Island treefrog is an exception; never leaving the tree as an adult, it will attach a foam nest to the tree branches. Logging has disrupted the treefrog’s environment, but it has quickly adapted to new growth forests.
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The Solomon Islands were settled over 30,000 years ago by Papua speaking people. Other migrations from Austronesian and Lapita people began arriving in the archipelago several thousand years later. The first Europeans to make contact with the native people were the Spanish, arriving in 1566. By 1893, the British had created a protectorate over the islands and aside from a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II, it remained under British control until gaining independence in 1978.
