Parks Victoria has planted specialised recording devices throughout the Yarra Ranges National Park to learn more about the biodiversity of frogs in the Lake Mountain plateau.
Announcing the project launch, Parks Victoria said it had partnered with Museums Victoria and Lake Mountain Alpine Resort to capture and record frog calls across the alpine resort and national park.
It said 10 specialised recording devices had been placed near waterbodies to record frog calls 24 hours a day over a four-month period.
“Different species of frogs each make their own unique call,” Parks Victoria said.
“A frog’s call could sound like a croak, ribbet or grunt,” it said.
“They can also differ by pitch or speed.”
Parks Victoria said identifying frogs on appearance alone could sometimes pose a challenge, which was where the study of Bioacoustics could help.
“By recording and monitoring where the species-specific sounds are captured, the research team will run the frog calls through a specialised call recogniser to determine which species are living on Lake Mountain,” it said.
Ranger at Parks Victoria, Sarah Matthews said the recording devices were “fantastic” as they were a non-invasive way of capturing data, which meant researchers did not have to disturb frogs’ habitat to identify them.
“This project is an amazing opportunity to provide important insight into what species have recovered since the fires,” Ms Matthews said.
“We expect to detect some frog species like the Common Froglet and the Victorian Smooth Froglet, but we are excited to see what else might be recorded,” she said.
“Some species like the threatened Alpine Tree Frog haven’t been sighted on the mountain since the 1950s.”
Ms Matthews said that, after all the sounds were captured, there would be a lot of work to run the data through a call recogniser program to identify which species were present.
