This week is the Australian Museums FrogID Week, Australia’s biggest frog count!

Frogs are a sign of a healthy environment, but around Australia frogs are declining and many are endangered. By counting Australia’s frogs we can learn more about where they are and how they’re doing.

There’s no way scientists can count Australia’s frogs on their own. The country’s too big and there’s too many frogs! That’s where you come in. With FrogID, citizen scientists just like you can help us put frogs on the map!

If you’d like to contribute, download the Australian Museum’s FrogID App onto your phone and start recording your frog calls!

Our Restoration Ecologist, Lisa Farnsworth has just completed analysing 3360 hours (1600GB) of frog call recordings collected over 4 years at Winton Wetlands by our local volunteer Rod Sherlock.

The purpose of this analysis was to confirm the absence of Growling Grass Frogs (Litoria raniformis) on the site, a species that has not been recorded at Winton Wetlands since 1970.

In the process of the analyses, the most common frog species detected on the recordings were the Spotted Marsh Frog (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis), the Common Eastern Froglet (Crinia signifera), the Eastern sign-bearing Froglet (Crinia parinsignifera) and the Peron’s Tree Frog (Litoria peronii).

Many thanks to Dr Karen Rowe from Museum Victoria for assistance with setting up the analyser software for this work and to the Wettenhall Environment Trust for funding the work.