April 2018 Issue
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THE FROG AND TADPOLE STUDY GROUP NSW Inc. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FATSNSW/ Email: [email protected] PO Box 296 Rockdale NSW 2216 NEWSLETTER No. 154 APRIL 2018 Frogwatch Helpline 0419 249 728 Website: www.fats.org.au ABN: 34 282 154 794 You are invited to our FATS meeting. Everyone is welcome. Arrive from 6.30 pm for a 7pm start. Friday 6 April 2018 FATS meet at the Education Centre, Bicentennial Pk, Sydney Olympic Park Easy walk from Concord West railway station and straight down Victoria Ave. By car: Enter from Australia Ave at the World Frog Day 20 March So much diversity in the world of frogs! Bicentennial Park main entrance, Let's celebrate all of the almost 7000 known frog species and the likely turn off to the right and drive thousands of as yet unknown to science. Make sure we don't lose any through the park. It is a one way road. more awesome amphibian friends to extinction. Or enter from Bennelong Rd / Parkway. Photo and comment by Dr Jodi Rowley It is a short stretch of two way road. Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum Park in P10f car park, the last car park before the Bennelong Rd. exit gate. CONTENTS PAGE FATS meeting Friday 6 April 2018 Last meeting main speakers: 6.30 pm Lost frogs desperately seeking forever homes: Several cheery Arthur White, Australian frogology 2 Green Tree Frogs Litoria caerulea and one lonely Litoria Kathy Potter, Frog ID app peroni Perons Tree Frog. Priority to new pet frog owners. Frog-O-Graphic competition Please bring your membership card and cash $50 donation. Rick Shine book launch Sorry we don’t have EFTPOS. Your current NSW NPWS “Cane Toad Wars” amphibian licence must be sighted on the night. Rescued FrogCalls 1- 154 on FATS website 3 frogs can never be released. FATS donation to Aspire program FATS five student grants 7.00 pm Welcome and announcements Easter Show & other FATS events Bubbles gets a helping hand 4 - 5 7.30 pm Our main speaker is Grant Webster: Herpdigest 6 - 9 “ Kim Dong's Hot pot- the frogs of Korea" FATS AGM 9 Amphibian license returns due 9.30 pm Show us your frog images. Tell us about your frogging trips Barkly Tablelands Frogs 10 or experiences. Guessing competition, frog adoptions Committee contacts & information 11 continue, supper, relax and chat with frog friends and experts. Frog husbandry FATS field trips 12 FrogCall 154 April 2018 P1 FATS MEETING 2 FEBRUARY 2018 rthur White treated us to a talk on the history Aof Frogology in Australia. He spoke about the oldest culture in the world, their relationship with frogs, recounted how Europeans began to classify Australian frogs about 1790 through to current conservationists, too many to mention here. More on this in our December collector’s edition. Photos below are of Arthur White and his presentation. Photo by Peter Spradbrow Litoria chloris 2017 Frog-O-Graphic competition 2018 FATS FROG-O-GRAPHIC Ten years ago FATS conducted our first Frog-O-Graphic competition. This proved very successful as we have many creative people in the group. So start photographing. We look forward to seeing your entries. The FATS members’ 2018 Frog-O-Graphic competition opens 1st May and closes 31st August, 2018 Best Frog Image, Best Pet Frog Image, Most Interesting Image, People’s Choice. Category winners to be decided by a panel of judges. People's Choice will be decided by everyone present at the December Australia’s first national frog count! Kathy Potter FATS meeting. All entries are by email to [email protected] demonstrated the successful free Australian Museum Please state: your name, confirm that you are a financial Frog ID app for smart phones, which includes a FATS member, whether the image is a pet frog and your guidebook, photos and calls. https://www.frogid.net.au/ contact phone number. Max 6 entries per person. Max promoted by FATS member and Museum Curator Dr attachment size 6 MB. Fabulous prizes awarded. Entries must Jodi Rowley. Recordings you make and send in via the be original and your own work. The winning entries may be app, will be identified by a team of experts. See: featured in FrogCall, FATS 2019 calendar and other FATS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl73oSP1MjE publications. Arthur White Why not start your year off capturing some frog calls? Not sure how to use FrogID? This detailed video should help. Get the kids to watch it and then demonstrate on the phone. Happy Frogging! Here is a map showing 10,000+ recordings since the launch. https://www.facebook.com/FrogIDaus/videos/15038914 76375333/ Josie Styles spoke about her roller coaster frog field trip to Queensland, surprise encounters and the very successful #FrogFriday with 3,550 (and growing) followers on Twitter. MW Photo below Kathy Potter OFFICIAL BOOK LAUNCH “CANE TOAD WARS” BY RICK SHINE 28 MARCH 2018 Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts 280 Pitt Street, Sydney It’s Rick’s first book since his now-classic “Australian Snakes-A Natural History” and describes his team’s research on one of the most high-profile environmental pests in Australia – the Cane Toad. It’s written for the public, not just other scientists and tells the extraordinary story about how a giant frog from the rainforests of Brazil managed to conquer the driest continent on Earth and what we can do about it. FrogCall 154 April 2018 P2 FATS EVENTS FROGCALLS FOR FATS MEMBERS he Australian Museum has asked FATS Tto have a frog display for all the April xisting FATS financial members receive FrogCall school holidays, 14-29 April, for 3 hours per E day possibly from 11am to 2pm. Can you every two months by email as a pdf digital attachment. spare an hour or two? Volunteers would be In June and December you also receive a hard copy by very welcome. No experience required. Please post. FATS make FrogCall available to the public, via contact Kathy Potter see page 11. our web site, after three or more months. Arthur White gave frog talks on 15 February to We have now uploaded a digital version of all our past the University of the 3rd Age Group, Sydney newsletters from No 1 in 1991 to No 151 October 2017, for University, at Panania and on 23 February the public on our web site www.fats.org.au “History of Green and Golden Bell frogs and The FATS FrogCall newsletters, prior to August 2007 (Nos their management at the Sydney Olympic 1 to 90), had no electronic master copy. I photographed the Parklands”, at Homebush. originals (many with colour articles never seen before by Marion Anstis gave a frog talk at the members) and saved the photos as pdf documents. Not all Christophorus Retirement Village, Hornsby on older FrogCalls had their 12 pages merge evenly, in size. If 13th March. you come across any of our FATS newsletters that are too difficult to read, I will attempt to adjust the page sizes and FATS DONATIONS ask Phillip Grimm to upload the improved version. Just email with the newsletter number to [email protected] . MW FATS gave a $500 donation to UNSW Aspire programme to encourage secondary students to undertake tertiary study. MW HELPERS NEEDED FOR FATS DISPLAY AT http://www.aspire.unsw.edu.au/ SYDNEY ROYAL EASTER SHOW 2 & 3 APRIL 2018 f you are able to help at the joint FATS and Australian IMuseum stall, please contact Kathy or David Potter. Even a FATS STUDENT GRANTS couple of hours will help. We have hundreds of people visit us. It’s a fun day. See page 11 for contact details. his year FATS is awarding 5 student http://www.wildexpo.com.au/default.htm Tgrants. We are able to do this many because of the large donation that we received from Australian Bush Heritage. The successful applicants were: Emma McInernery- University of Wollongong. Her project is the looking at the effects of dietary stress on juvenile Southern Corroboree Frog and how this relates to adult survivorship. Brittany Mitchell - University of Wollongong. He project will look at the effects of dietary carotenoids on the predisposition of Southern Corroboree Frogs to frog chytrid disease. Shannon Kelleher - University of Wollongong. Her project will examine mate selection in Southern Corroboree frogs. Jordann Crawford-Ash – Australian Museum. He will measure and examine the incidence of Bd, the pathogen that causes Frog Chytrid Disease, in two species of Sydney frogs. Timothy Cutajar – Australian Museum. Tim will be monitoring frog biodiversity using prey (invertebrate) DNA. Congratulations to the winners and we look forward to hearing about the outcome of their researches at a later FATS meeting. AW FrogCall 154 April 2018 P3 MARGOT GIVES BUBBLES A HELPING HAND interloper...obviously came in with some pond water. The fish seems to have blue eyes and an orange /yellow body.” LEFT: Bubbles in trouble. RIGHT: A regular visitor ne of the 2,363 FATS Facebook friends, Margot Ofrom King Creek NSW (mid north coast) found her local Litoria caerulea Green Tree Frogs (GTFs) that hang around the house, spawning in her cat water bowl. “The tadpoles are on the verge of morphing...first one left this morning. I have flexible flyscreen loosely draped over the boxes to keep them safe with sticks where they can climb out and leave.” 27/1 “And a little drama on the way. Am wondering what's going on with one of my tadpoles. It's swimming Despite having a lovely pond to use on the property, the around like crazy..