GVI Kenya

Category: Amphibians, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: May 03 2009 | By: gvikenya

Matt wrote earlier in the week about an exciting frog find in the forest and as Saturday night came round his rainy season wish came true. At our forest base and office in Shimoni we were decidedly ‘off-duty’, kicking back and watching a film… Just before hitting the sack, I noticed a little visitor perched on the bars of the kitchen window and so our mini research team kicked in to action. Recognising the small amphibian from an individual we had caught a few years before, it didn’t take long to identify. We are fairly confident we have our second Tinker Reed Frog, or Hyperolius tuberilinguis. 

This beautiful yellow-green reed frog reveals striking red-orange backs of the thighs when jumping. It has been suggested that this trait may serve to startle predators as it makes its escape, but the colour is the result of a concentrated supply of blood vessels under a thinner layer of skin, enabling an area of rapid water uptake, important for amphibians living in tropical East Africa! The body length of the frog suggested it may be a male, males often being smaller than females in the amphibian world, however the lack of a bright yellow throat indicates the reverse. If it was a female, the she may well have been out looking for a pool of water above which she can lay up to 400 eggs above the surface, attached to vegetation.   

With the Hyperolius being a somewhat tricky genus within which to determine species, we’re pleased to have had an easy job with this one and look forward to seeing what else the rains will bring us. Would be nice if they gave us Saturday nights off though…  

Corti

Tags: amphibian, coastal forest biodiversity, coastal forest research, reed frog

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Category: Amphibians, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: Apr 28 2009 | By: gvikenya

Last week saw the rainy season begin to creep in.  The first few days were fairly tame, with only a few light showers.  But towards the end of the week, the dark clouds rolled in off the sea and the true African rains started. This can make some elements of our forest research slightly more challenging, and some – like our primate community surveys – impossible.  Either way, its sodden clothes and wet boots all round.  

There are however, some advantages to the rains.  Not only does the vegetation, fruits and flowers all spring back into life, but the forest sees an explosion in diversity and abundance of amphibians! 

We’ve seen several very cool frogs this week, but the highlight has been what we believe to be a Fornasini’s spiny reed frog (Afrixalus fornasini).  It is a beautifully patterned reed frog that is usually associated with ponds where reeds and sedges are growing.  It has been found in Kenya southward through eastern and southern Tanzania, including the low slopes of the Usambara, Uluguru and Udzungwa mountains, south to Malawi, Mozambique, and north eastern South Africa.  Another common name for this frog is the greater leaf folding frog, due to a rather clever way the female protects its eggs.  About 80 eggs are laid on a reed leaf, starting at the tip, the edges of which are then folded toward one another and glued together, to defend against predators. This species also has skin that contains small amounts of substances called tachykinins, which are responsible for upsetting the heartbeat and serve to detract mammal predators.   

It is a beautiful and very cool little frog, and we look forward to finding more and more as the rains continue!    

Matt 

Tags: amphibian, biodiversity, Coastal Forest, conservation, reed frog, research

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Category: Amphibians, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: Jun 05 2008 | By: gvikenya

My question for the day: what do you do when you can’t get in to the field to collect data…?

… you wait for the data to come to you.

Shimoni’s coastal forests fall under one of 25 initially recognised Global Biodiversity Hotspots, as part of the Northern Zanzibar-Inhambane coastal forest mosaic. Whilst our research focuses primarily on the charismatic Angolan Black and White (or Pied) Colobus we also aim to collect data on the diversity of both plant and animal species. And after nearly four years of collecting amphibian specimens in Tanzania, frogs have become a particular favourite of mine, for their remarkable range of shapes, sizes, colours and life histories designed to fill an equally remarkable array of ecological niches.

Not surprisingly, the wet season represents the best time of year for finding frogs, when these amphibious animals are at their most active, which our coastal forest research programme is missing out on this year. So I was very excited when the following hopped across my office floor a few evenings ago…

The size, webbed feet, expanded tips of the digits and horizontal oval pupils mark it out as a Hyperolius species, or one of the reed frogs; small climbing frogs with an incredible range of striking colour patterns. Unfortunately the taxonomy is very confusing for this group with scientists still trying to work out relationships between species and sub-species, but it would appear to be a different species to the Hyperolius we had recorded previously, pictured below:

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Category: Amphibians, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Shrews | Date: Dec 01 2007 | By: admin

Since August of this year GVI has been supporting Kenya Wildlife Service and the Colobus Trust to carry out the first national census of the Angolan Black and White Colobus since 2001. Having already completed the census in Shimoni’s forests, we have spent the last few weeks at Gonja Forest Reserve, between the border posts of Kenya and Tanzania. Our Terrestrial Officer, Emma, returned today after finishing off the last of the transects with our team of expedition members. For me playing a key role in the census has been one of the most valuable contributions we have made to the conservation of this amazing animal.  Emma, our Terrestrial Science Officer, tells us the news from Gonja…

Above: The research team for Gonja Forest Reserve, Emma is second from the right in the top row

“After two weeks and twenty two transects, Gonja provided us with just 13 Colobus sightings from 5 troops, two of which were just solitary males. In 2001,  the census recorded 24 colobus, which indicates a worrying decline in the population for an area of forest that is under formal protection.

Above: The red legged running frog, Kassina maculata, a wonderful find in Gonja

But there were some excicitng findings too… we found two new species of frogs that we haven’t recorded before one of which was the beautiful Kassina maculata, or red legged running frog, the second species in this genus that we have found.

We also had a visit from a shrew, a Crocidura spp, which was very cute! Unfortunately with over 100 species described that all look very similar, we are unable to identiy which species it is without taking a specimen for identification by experts. Finally our time crawling through Gonja forest also gave us some smaller adventures… the bee nests and army ant attacks were not the fondest of memories but we saw some very very cool spiders!”

Above: The shrew we found, Crocidura sp 

Above: One of the spiders that make the coastal forests such an exicting place of discovery

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