I remember the park rangers saying, “Why are you going there? There’s no water on top, and you’re not going to find any frogs.” I said, “Well, I’m going to check it out.”
The Espinhaço mountain range in the east of Brazil is a very special place, and it is mostly unknown. My house overlooks the mountain in Pico do Itambé State Park, so every morning I eat my breakfast and look at it. You are surrounded by thunderstorms and strong winds, and the humidity is high. I waited for heavy rain and went to climb to the top.
What caught my eye were the bromeliad plants, which look like the top of a giant pineapple. Each plant can hold up to 2 liters of water, and inside there is so much going on. Larvae, beetles, all kinds of invertebrates live there – it’s a whole ecosystem in a tiny space. The central cup holds a lot of rainwater, and I thought there might be some frogs using it.
Sure enough I was right. And it led me to discover a new species of frog, which I committed my life to protecting.
That day I found a frog in the very first bromeliad I looked inside. I thought, wow, I’ve never seen such a small frog, it was the size of my fingernail. I couldn’t catch it – the plant was like a maze inside.
I looked in the next bromeliad and there was another frog. They had them all in. I saw about 20 frogs that night and caught three. I took them to the museum for identification but couldn’t find a match. I ended up walking around for a year with three frogs in my pocket, preserved in alcohol in a jar. I would take them to meetings with me and ask people if they had ever seen them. Then I met a taxonomist from São Paulo who took one look at them and said it was a new species.
Not only was it a new species, it turned out to be a very rare and special frog. The entire species lives within 0.5 sq km on a patch of land 1,800 meters above sea level. These frogs spend their entire life cycle inside the plant: they lay their eggs, become tadpoles and do everything in it.
I have officially described the species as Crossodactylodes itambe in 2013, four years after I found it. I decided to focus my research on this frog, and work to save it.
I never thought I would spend my career learning about frogs, but it feels like an obligation to complete this work and make sure they are protected. I hope to inspire others to do the same, to spend their whole lives researching one single species and making something out of it – because by protecting one species I’m protecting an entire habitat.
During my research, part of the area where these frogs live was destroyed by fire, and this is the biggest threat. Fire from the surrounding communities reaches the top of the mountain very quickly, so we need to find ways to stop it. Climate collapse is going to exacerbate fire events – we have dry weather, it’s extremely hot and fires are burning everywhere.
I really want the local community to feel proud and want to protect this local wildlife. Because otherwise this frog does not have a very bright future. I’m just doing my best and trying to keep their habitat safe. I don’t want to think about them disappearing. I try to be optimistic, and think that these frogs are going to be here for as long as I live, and even beyond. I think that will be my legacy, to protect this little frog. Hopefully someone will take it over because the work won’t stop.
-
As told to Phoebe Weston. Dr. Bela Barata is a Brazilian ecologist who works at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Instituto Biotrópicos. She specializes in the conservation of frogs that live in mountainous tropical areas.
