BENGALURU: Climate change is one of the biggest and most direct threats to amphibians like frogs, salamanders and caecilians (limbless amphibians). Researchers have found that 30 of these species from the Western Ghats are threatened. Of the 8,000 amphibian species researchers studied globally, 426 were from India. As many as 100 species of amphibians from Karnataka were studied and 30 were found to be threatened.
Similarly, 178 species from Kerala were studied and 84 were found to be threatened. In Tamil Nadu, 128 species were studied and 54 were threatened. These findings were part of a study - Ongoing declines for the world’s amphibians in the face of emerging threats - published in the journal Nature on October 4. The study is based on the second global amphibian assessment, coordinated by the Amphibian Red List Authority, a branch of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s Amphibian Specialist Group. The first such assessment was done in 2004.
Over 1,000 experts from across the globe contributed data and expertise in the study, which found that two out of every five amphibians are threatened with extinction. This data is also being included in the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Thirty experts from India were part of the study.
The study noted that climate change was the primary threat to 39 per cent of the assessed species. Batrachologist and faculty member, of Srishti Manipal Institute of Art Design and Technology, Gururaja K V, told The New Indian Express, “We did a species-wise study. The family of dancing frogs is the most threatened species in the Indo-Malaysian region, more so in the Western Ghats. There are 24 species in the Ghats. Of these, two are critically endangered and 15 are endangered. This shows that 92 per cent of the group is threatened. This is also the fifth most threatened group in the world.” Gururaja was the researcher from Karnataka to contribute to the study.
“After the dancing frogs, the next species that is most threatened in all three southern states is Nyctibatrachidae (night frogs) and 83.9 per cent of the family is threatened across the Western Ghats. There has been a long gap between the first and the second study. Now with this, we want to do it annually so that there are regular updates and better protection. The government should use the study to shift their focus from concentration on charismatic species to lesser known and smaller species. Micro habitat protection is crucial now,” he added. Researchers also pointed out that there is only one salamander species in India, in Darjeeling, and it is threatened.
They added that little is known of the caecilians. They said there are 40 species of caecilians in India, of which 36 are in the Western Ghats and four in the North East. However, only 13 species have been assessed and all are threatened.