14 new species of dancing frogs discovered in Western Ghats

Indian scientists have discovered new 14 species of dancing frogs in the Western Ghats. The dancing name is courtesy the males, who employ unusual kicks to attract mates.

Updated on: May 9, 2014, 13:37:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian scientists have discovered new 14 species of dancing frogs in the world’s waning ecological hotspot — the Western Ghats.

The dancing name is courtesy the males, who employ unusual kicks to attract mates. This is a unique breeding behaviour called foot-flagging.

The males stretch, extend and whip their legs out to the side to draw the attention of females. Such displays come in handy because there is a possibility of mating croaks being drowned out by the sound of water flowing through perennial hill streams.

The bigger the frog, the more vigorous the dance. “They need to perform and prove, ‘Hey, I’m the best man for you,’” said SD Biju, a botanist-turned-herpetologist now celebrated as India’s “Frogman” for discovering dozens of new species in his four-decade career.

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A study listing the new species was published on Thursday in the Ceylon Journal of Science. It brings the number of known Indian dancing frog species to 24.

The tiny amphibians of the genus Micrixalus trace their origin to 85 million years ago. Their habitat is drying because of excessive development and this has biologists worried. Amphibians are highly vulnerable to changes in local ecology.

“We have brought these beautiful frogs into public knowledge. But about 80% of them are outside protected areas and in some places, it is as if nature itself is crying,” Biju, the lead scientist of the Indian amphibian recovery project and a professor at Delhi University, said.

The Western Ghats — a lush mountain range spread across 1,600 km — is a global bio-diversity hotspot with high species richness. Over the last 15 years, 75 new amphibian species have been discovered from the Ghats. Biju and his team are credited with finding 50 of them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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