![]() It can dig into loose soil within 3-5 minutes and escapes into gravel surfaces using stretching movements. According to the indigenous people of Idukki, it ‘resembles a turtle without a shell’ andīeing a fossorial form, it has a strongly ossified skull, well calcified bones and hind feet possessing large shovel-like inner metatarsal tubercles for digging. ![]() Purple Frogs mating Image Source: Wikipedia “Mahabali”īeing one of the rarest frog species to be endemic to Kerala and the increasing need to conserve it, the state government has made it a contender for the title of the State Amphibian of Kerala, calling it the ‘Māveli (Mahabali) Frog’, owing to its rounded body form and its once in a year appearance. It is believed to have existed for 120 million years, evolving independently without much divergence from its ancestors, thus earning its place as a living fossil of all living frogs. Molecular evidence suggests that its closest relative is the Sooglossids- in the Seychelles Island in Africa which implies that the frog existed before the continental drift and hence supporting the idea of the Gondwanaland Supercontinent. It prefers damp, moist, loose, aerated soil that is close to a waterbody, for the female to lay its eggs. It had escaped the notice of most biogeographers since it preferred staying underground for most of its life (except for the 2 weeks during pre-monsoon season when it comes out to mate). ![]() This indigenous frog was described several times by the people of Kerala, including its tadpole in 1918, however the credits to the official discovery of this frog has been given to SD Biju (Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, Pallode, Kerala) and Franky Bossuyt (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), who found it in the Idukki district of Kerala and introduced it to the scientific circles. It is dubbed as a ‘once in a century find’ by bio- geographers around the world. Scientifically named after its strange nose (‘naasika’= nose in Sanskrit) and the name for the Western Ghats (Sahyadris), Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis is one of the only two species (the other being Nasikabatrachus bhupati) present in the family Nasikabatrachidae. The purple frog or the pig-nosed frog is an unusual frog, native to the Southern Western Ghats (Kerala and Tamil Nadu), having a deep pink to dark greyish-purple colouration on its body. One such species is the rare Purple frog. The Western Ghats is home to one of the richest biodiversity in the world, having species that cannot be found anywhere else and yet several of these species are on the brink of extinction. The count and conservation of these endemic species weren’t taken too seriously until recently when the Western Ghats was labelled as one of the ‘hottest biodiversity hotspots’ in the world and the focus shifted from phylogeny and taxonomy to conservation and ecology. About 156 new endemic amphibian species have been discovered in India since 2000, with an average of 10 new species every year. India bears one of the most unique amphibian megafauna in the world despite not being recognised as such on a global scale.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |