PREVIEW

Ecologists at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) site, Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, recorded an animal call in March this year which had never before been captured on tape.
After record-breaking rains swept over the sanctuary and other parts of the Northern Territory, Australia, lakes and wetlands reportedly began to swell on site.
This event triggered an influx of activity, courtship, and breeding – including by frogs.
“Over the Easter long weekend following all the rain, we visited one of the claypan lakes to look for frogs,” AWC wildlife ecologist Dr. Tim Henderson said in the organisation’s press release. “The lake is extremely full at the moment, and while we were there we heard lots of frogs calling. The calls were really distinctive, and unlike any of the other species that we find out here regularly.”
He continued, “We were eventually able to pinpoint the calls through the undergrowth to locate these little frogs, which matched the description for Tanami Toadlets.”
The AWC scientists ventured into the site with an app called FrogID, developed by the Australian Museum, which helped them identify the croaking toadlet.
“The FrogID app gives us an easy way of detecting and recording frogs which can be hard to spot, or difficult to identify by appearance alone,” Dr. Henderson continued his statement. “It’s not often that you get to document something like this for science for the first time.”
The Tanami toadlet was first identified in 1981, without their call recorded.
Tanami toadlets are usually found in Australia’s Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and grow to approximately four centimetres long (one-and-a-half inches long).
The animals are called toadlets as they seem similar to toads but in fact are unrelated, alongside 28 other toadlet species in their genus Uperoleia.
While little is known about this elusive frog, photos of its bumpy, dark brown skin with stipplings of gold and a belly of white have captured the attention of animal lovers.
Scientists have determined, however, that Tanami toadlets evolved while the vast and arid dune fields were spreading around Australia.
Their closest relative lives in the monsoonal tropics, in the west Kimberley, WA.
It’s taken 43 years since we first recognized this species for someone to record its call,” the Australian Museum’s amphibians curator Dr. Jodi Rowley added in her own statement. “That’s pretty amazing! There’s still so much to discover about Australian amphibians, and this recording will make it easier for other people to detect Tanami Toadlets in the future.”
During the Central Australia rainfall event in March, Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary recorded over 316mm of rain.
“Newhaven looked more like the Okavango delta than a desert,” Dr. Henderson joked. “It was our third wettest month on record, and we’ve already received more than the annual average rainfall in 2024.”