An undisputed frog prince
When it comes to the world of amphibians, professor Sathyabhama Das Biju, 58, is something of a celebrity. India’s leading “frogman”, he has discovered 105 species, starting with the Indian purple frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis) in 2003.
A few years before that find, Biju, a former botanist then new to herpetology, published a paper claiming that there were hundreds of frogs yet to be discovered in India. It was based on the decade Biju spent in the Western Ghats, studying how indigenous communities used medicinal plants.
At the time, no one in the world of herpetology gave credence to Biju’s claim. Then he discovered the strange-looking purple frog, evidence of the ancient geographical link between India and the Seychelles, an island now almost 4,000 km away in the Indian Ocean, and things began to change.
Biju has since led hundreds of expeditions, in the Himalayas and Western Ghats, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia and Thailand. Amphibian research is challenging, he says. Frogs are best observed at night, in the monsoon. “No rain, no frogs.” So researchers must work in the dark, in forests, as it rains, encountering (whether they like it or not) insects, aquatic creatures and leeches.
After the field work comes months of comparative lab studies, documenting findings (Biju is now dean of science faculty at the University of Delhi). It can take years before a new species is formally named.
So far, Biju has discovered India’s first canopy-dwelling frog (the Raorchestes nerostagona, in the Western Ghats); the tiniest member of the Nyctibatrachus frog family (the 10-mm Nyctibatrachus minimus, in Wayanad, Kerala); and in the Himalayan foothills he uncovered the Frankixalus jerdonii, a species of tree frog that feeds its young with unfertilised eggs and was thought to be extinct for nearly 150 years.
As with all things wild, a lot has changed lately. The quality of forests is diminishing rapidly. Frogs’ natural habitats are vanishing. Frogs are sensitive, so they’re good environmental health indicators; they are an important evolutionary link for the transition of life from water to land. They have emerged as a source of novel peptides for new drugs.
“The list goes on,” Biju says. The truth, he adds, is that no form of life, from the most microscopic to the most charismatic, is here without reason.