Frogs. Most of us have caught them, some of us even reared them from their infant tadpole stage in glass containers, only to crudely dissect them on tables.
A comprehensive frog atlas compiled by the University of Cape Town’s avian unit is currently at the printers and sounds a warning to all frog lovers of the dire straits these amphibians are in.
”The 400-page frog atlas is being published by Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, and provides an extensive species account and distribution maps of every species in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland,” said project manager James Harrison on Monday.
He said in addition, the book provided extra details on threatened species in the atlas region. Harrison said four species were listed as critically endangered, eight were endangered, eight were vulnerable species and a further six were near-threatened species according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
”The book will focus attention on threatened species and areas where they occur… with the great majority of these threatened species in KwaZulu-Natal and the south-western Cape,” he said.
Harrison said the project started in 1995 and only concluded this year.
The project involved mapping the distribution of all 115 frog species in the three countries using data collected from about 2000 quarter degree grid cells (each grid cell is 15 minutes of longitude by 15 minutes of latitude).
It also involved assessing the conservation status of these species. Asked why it took practically nine years to collect the data, Harrison said gathering the information was no simple task.
”The job is done by going out to listening calls, with each species having a unique, advertisement call by which it can be identified. Most frogs call only when its wet and at night, so data collection is quite a daunting task,” said Harrison.
He said the project amassed a date base of about 42 000 records, mainly new, with the addition of existing records from museum collections.
Harrison said during the data collection period five new species were described, but more species lay waiting to be discovered and described.
”This is the first frog atlas in this part of the world and one of the most comprehensive done anywhere in the world… We are hoping to launch a reptile atlas during new year,” he said.
Asked why the avian or bird unit had conducted the research, Harrison said expertise garnered during the 1997 bird atlas was applied to conduct the ”biological atlassing” of the frogs, which involved many institutions, universities, professional herpetologists (study of amphibians and reptiles) and volunteers.
The three principal sponsors were the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, the conservation organisation WWF-SA, and the Mazda Wildlife Fund. – Sapa