Frogs etc.

yeah nature rocks actually main blog @genderboi

[aesungaia]

[aesungaia]

[boobookittenartblog]

Nishiyama Hoen, Insect Procession,

detail, ink and color on silk, 1851

[crapbirdphotography]

My film came back from the developer and included this… interesting… photo of a rainbow lorikeet.

[maybe-i-will-animals]

Violet-eared Waxbill - Granatina granatina Petersburg, South Africa © Vaughan Jessnitz CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Sandveld Drumsticks - Zaluzianskya affinis Garies, South Africa © Nicola van Berkel CC-BY-SA some rights reserved source

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Species of Buttons - Conophytum smorenskaduense Northern Cape, South Africa © Ismail Ebrahim CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Species of Froetang - Romulea pudica Nieuwoudtville, South Africa © Karen Eichholz CC-BY some rights reserved source

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Crimson-breasted Shrike - Laniarius atrococcineus Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa © Tony Rebelo CC-BY-SA some rights reserved source

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Confused Sand Frog - Tomopterna adiastola Bredenkamp Nature reserve, South Africa © _3foxes CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Martial Eagle - Polemaetus bellicosus Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa © Kina Joubert CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Karoo Toad - Vandijkophrynus gariepensis Tankwa-Karoo National Park, South Africa © tania_morkel CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Balloon Flame Lichen - Dufourea inflata Kleinsee, South Africa © Karel du Toit CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Greater Kestrel - Falco rupicoloides Hanover Road, South Africa © Diego Rubolini CC-BY some rights reserved source

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Species of Silk Lilly - Sparaxis pillansii Nieuwoudtville, South Africa © Felix Riegel CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

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Desert Rain Frog - Breviceps macrops Kleinsee, South Africa © Richard Jessnitz CC-BY-NC some rights reserved source

[markscherz]

My team and I have just concluded the first part of our three-destination field trip here in Madagascar. It took us to the littoral forest of Agnalazaha in the south central east of the island. This forest is incredible; it is basically on top of sand dunes, with verdant swamps in the shallow valleys in between.

Here we lived and worked for the last five days, collecting specimens for my project looking at the genomics of miniaturisation in vertebrates, GEMINI. Our field lab was something to behold.

We came to Agnalazaha in search of Mini mum, which my team and I had previously documented from this area for the first time. We found them—lots and lots of them.

Every morning the air is full of the little peeping calls of Mini; it starts around 5, and continues until about 10. The calls alone suggest there are thousands upon thousands of these tiny frogs everywhere in the forest—but finding them is no mean feat. Fortunately I had an awesome team with me, whose hard work payed off, and we were able to get the samples we needed!

The Mini frog population density really blew me away. In some areas we found as many as five individuals in one square metre of leaf litter. A back-of-envelope calculation puts the population in the protected area at something like 80 million frogs! That’s almost certainly exaggerated, but maybe not by much! Still, Agnalazaha is one of just a few remaining fragments of this awesome forest type, so the species is surely highly threatened by habitat loss.

Our work now takes us to another protected area: the famed Ranomafana National Park, where we will be hunting for another hyper-miniaturised frog that is not closely related to Mini at all—Anodonthyla eximia! That species is known from just a single individual, collected in the leaf litter after a cyclone. So, I am hopeful, but not yet too optimistic, about our chances of success to find that species over the next week and a half!