On a typical summer day in Kruger, daytime temperatures can soar to over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. But at night, the temperature drops into the 70s, allowing a plethora of nocturnal animals to emerge.
“Oh! This is one my favorite guys as well. Wow, that is very cool. So, this is a rain frog, a bushveld rain frog,” said Nikisha Singh, the curator for the Skukuza Biological Reference Collection in Kruger National Park. There, in addition to managing the collection, she also organizes trips to the field, facilitates education, catalogues specimens, and also helps with identification. Which might be part of the reason why she was able to immediately identify that rain frog.
“They're adorable, and they always have this sort of grumpy look going on. So, I just, I adore them,” she said.
This is understandable since she specializes in frogs. Specifically, their tadpoles because frogs here are rarely active during the day. Across the park, Singh has selected different pans where water collects seasonally. There, she surveys for tadpoles using a dip net, collects specimens, and takes tissue samples from tadpole tales.
“That material can then be used in DNA barcoding methods to identify what species they are, because sometimes the tadpoles are so small that they are quite difficult to identify,” said Singh.
Aside from her own interest, a major reason that Singh is trying to learn more about the frogs of Kruger is because of their well-documented global decline. Park wide historical records of frog distribution date back to over 40 years with significant studies since pointing to potential data gaps and suggesting future research.
This is significant because many of the stress factors linked to the global amphibian decline such as habitat fragmentation, pollution, and fungal diseases, do not apply here because Kruger, the largest park in South Africa, with an area of over 19,000 km2. Granted, that’s a lot of intact habitat for its 34 species of frogs, but it is possible there are other stressors present here and frog populations have likely fluctuated since the last comprehensive survey.
Ultimately, Singh hopes to incorporate her frog research into the park’s annual freshwater surveys to better understand their populations.
“Because if we don't know what's occurring here, how can we preserve it, you know?” said Singh.
It’s very possible that just like in the US, many frog species here could in decline. Thankfully though, Kruger is a protected area with robust populations of megafauna like elephants and lions. But Singh hopes these big mammals aren’t the only animals people think of when they visit the park.
“In protected areas like the park it's always the charismatic species that are highlighted. But you know, the smaller critters, such as your frogs, even insects and such, are not really in the limelight," said Singh. "It's always good to look at the little things and their importance as well in not only a protected area, but I guess in any sort of habitat.”
Because in nature, after all, everything really is connected.
