Corresponding author: Jodi J. L. Rowley (
Academic editor: A. Ohler
This dataset represents expert-validated occurrence records of calling frogs across Australia collected via the national citizen science project FrogID (
Rowley JJL, Callaghan CT (2020) The FrogID dataset: expert-validated occurrence records of Australia’s frogs collected by citizen scientists. ZooKeys 912: 139–151.
Biodiversity monitoring is critical for conservation, useful in warning of impending extinction crises, and has direct implications for management practices for improved biodiversity targets (
Frogs and other amphibians are sensitive to changes in their environment due to their biphasic lifestyle (with most species having an aquatic larval stage and a terrestrial adult), semi-permeable skin, and reliance on specific environmental conditions for reproduction (
Despite the need for biodiversity data on frogs, frogs are inherently difficult to survey, leaving a lack of detailed knowledge of broad-scale distributions, occurrences, and habitat associations. This is largely a result of logistical constraints, including a lack of funding available for surveys and access to often remote sites, and the fact that many frog species are difficult to detect, having activity patterns highly reliant on weather. Many frog species are also small and camouflaged, rendering them difficult to visually locate.
The frog advertisement call serves as a premating isolation mechanism (
All known frog species in Australia have audible advertisement calls and only a few are difficult to identify to species via their calls alone (e.g., several species of the genus
Launched on 10 November 2017 and led by the Australian Museum, FrogID is the first citizen science initiative aimed at capturing validated biodiversity data on Australian frogs on a national scale (
Publishing biodiversity data advances our collective knowledge on global biodiversity (
Funding for the FrogID project was provided by the Australian Government’s Citizen Science Grants program, the Impact Grants program of IBM Australia provided the resources to build the FrogID App. In-kind funding was provided by the Australian Museum. Bunnings and Fyna Foods are project partners.
While effective conservation relies on accurate knowledge of where species occur, releasing the locations of observation records may have inadvertent negative impacts (
We therefore follow ethical data publication guidelines (e.g.,
Geoprivacy options, which dictate whether or not the exact latitude and longitude coordinates are provided in our published dataset.
Geoprivacy option | Action |
---|---|
Open | No buffering of coordinates. |
Obscured | Decimal coordinates rounded to nearest 0.1 degree. Actual coordinates are available upon special request. |
Private | Record is not included in our published dataset but is available upon special request. |
Associated frog species threat categories and associated geoprivacy options (Table
Frog species threat category | Geoprivacy |
---|---|
Not listed | Species is generally open, but may be obscured or private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Vulnerable | Species is generally open but may be obscured (with individual records outside of known range private), or private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Endangered | Species is generally obscured (with individual records outside of known range private) but may be private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Critically Endangered | Private. |
Extinct | Private. |
Throughout the first year of the FrogID project, 179 species of six families and 23 genera were recorded and are represented in the database, accumulating to 55,003 biodiversity records. The top-six most recorded species were:
Photographs of the top six species recorded in the first year FrogID.
Frequency histogram for the 172 species published in our openly accessible dataset, showing the number of records (on a log-scale) and how many species have that associated number of records.
The openly accessible published dataset – after applying our aforementioned rules on sensitive species and records – hosts 172 species of the 179. A total of 139 submissions of 11 species were deemed private (Table
The frog fauna of Australia remains incompletely known. The database will be updated on an ongoing process, incorporating taxonomic changes, including any new species described. Annual releases will reflect these changes. The date of each data release will be critical for users to track.
Occurrence records of calling frogs across Australia during year 1 of the FrogID project.
The dataset includes basic biodiversity occurrence data, with Darwin Core terms (
Description of the data fields.
Data field | Description |
---|---|
datasetName | FrogID |
basisOfRecord | Occurrence |
dataGeneralizations | Highlights the geoprivacy options that were implemented |
occurrenceID | Unique ID for each record in the dataset |
sex | Male frogs are being recorded |
lifestage | Adult frogs are recorded in FrogID |
behavior | Only calling frogs are entered into the FrogID database |
samplingProtocol | Call recording |
country | Australia |
machineObservation | An occurrence record based on an audio recording |
eventID | Refers to the submission id – one submission can have more than one record |
decimalLatitude | Latitude |
decimalLongitude | Longitude |
scientificName | Species name ( |
eventDate | Date in year-month-day format |
eventTime | Time the recording was taken |
coordinateUncertaintyInMeters | A measure of the gps accuracy, measured in meters. See notes in methods |
geoprivacy | Indicates whether the record is included and/or coordinates are buffered |
recordedBy | Unique user id |
stateProvince | Australian state of the record |
modified | The date the record was last updated: useful for updating taxonomy or correcting errors in future dataset uploads |
The FrogID database of expert-validated records of frogs across Australia represents a significant and growing contribution to our understanding of frogs in Australia. The first year of FrogID has resulted in the collection of over 55,000 expert-validated records of frogs across Australia. As frogs call almost exclusively from breeding sites, localities of calling frogs also provide vital information on their breeding habitats and times.
FrogID data provides a valuable resource aimed to help enhance our knowledge of frog distribution and occurrence in Australia. So far, the data have (1) shown new knowledge of distribution and breeding seasons for several species, (2) detected native frogs outside their native range, likely transported by humans, (3) collected data on invasive Cane Toads (
We would like to thank the Citizen Science Grants of the Australian Government for providing funding for the FrogID project; the Impact Grants program of IBM Australia for providing the resources to build the FrogID App; Bunnings and Fyna Foods for supporting FrogID as project partners; the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Museums Victoria, Queensland Museum, South Australian Museum, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and Western Australian Museum as FrogID partner museums; the many Australian Museum staff and volunteers who make up the FrogID team; and the thousands of citizen scientists across Australia who have volunteered their time to record frogs.
The 241 frog species known from Australia (including the introduced Cane Toad), taxonomic authority and geoprivacy category used
Species data