Faithful Fathers and Crooked Cannibals

Considering that we humans are overly protective of our offspring and most of the care is given by both parents, with differing roles, this article discusses a paper by Dr K.S. Seshadri and Professor David Bickford on a bush frog Raorchestes chalazodes found in the Western Ghats. Dr Marianne Furtado de Nazareth discusses the paper and was surprised to learn that parental care is given by the males alone which is quite widespread among amphibians and fish.

- Dr Marianne Furtado de Nazareth

Raorchestes chalazodes is an arboreal frog that was presumed extinct and is currently listed as critically endangered. The frog is found in a narrow region of the southern Western Ghats restricted to elevations 1200 m above sea level. K. S. Seshadri and David Bickford in their article ‘Faithful fathers and crooked cannibals: the adaptive significance of parental care in the bush frog Raorchestes chalazodes, Western Ghats, India’ discuss about R. chalazodes and the parental care given by adult males. The discovery of a novel reproductive mode in the white-spotted bush frog (R. chalazodes) from the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot of peninsular India has been an exciting revelation.

K.S. Seshadri speaks about the adaptive significance of parental care in bush frog (R. chalazodes) found in Western Ghats, India. He spoke about his work and the difficulties he encountered while doing field research. Seshadri said “This work was undertaken in the remote forests of the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. The reason was that the bush frogs are found there. It was challenging because the place is remote, it takes about a half a day’s journey to reach a good hospital, there is only one place to eat, and there are no means of transport. The frogs being active at night, we had to start looking for them in the evenings. On numerous instances, we have walked into leopards and elephants and even snakes. Working in the bamboo habitat is risky and if you slip you can fall into a stream or hurt yourself by falling on bamboo stalks, which are sharp as spears when cut or broken”.

Seshadri added that finding the frogs was very difficult. The frogs sit inside bamboo internodes and the scientists had to use an endoscope to look inside and record behaviour. “All this was quite a task at night with rains and wildlife all around us,” he said.