4 July 2010 Park Headquarters, Kinabalu Park, Sabah, Malaysia

Hey gang,

Amazingly, this is my last week & entry for my time here on Kinabalu. It seems to have gone by so fast! It was a good week to end on--Samantha and I went up towards the summit to survey two high elevation sites: Pakka at about 3120 m, and Kemburongoh at about 2750 m. We stayed about half-way between the two on the summit trail, and hiked up or down, depending on the day.

We started the week surveying the higher sites, and found very few frogs—only a few species get up that high, and they’re not very abundant. The highest elevation we saw a frog was about 3150 m—pretty high!—and the most frogs we saw in a single night around Pakka was three! Because we were staying in a cabin along the summit trail, we got to speak with some hikers about what we were doing, and I enjoyed seeing the surprise on people’s faces when we told them that yes, frogs do occur that high. I love that frogs are always surprising people—they’re so sensitive to environmental change in so many ways, but in many ways they’re very resilient. You can find them in deserts, in frozen ponds (and yes, they will survive), and in brackish water. But if you alter the habitat of a given species, they don’t often fare well. Frogs are extremely sensitive to climate change, habitat alteration, and fungal disease, just to name a few of the threats they currently face. I love this dichotomy about them, and I hope that my work will ultimately contribute to the conservation of this awesome group of organisms.

At both sites we recorded a few individuals to try to determine the differences between a couple of cryptic species. The term “cryptic species” can apply to various types of organisms. It sometimes refers to species that are well camouflaged and difficult to see, and sometimes it refers to multiple species that are difficult to differentiate from one another. Most evolutionary biologists use the term in the latter sense—and in our case, we are trying to determine differences between multiple species of a small tree frog in the genus Philautus. In some cases, you can determine species by elevation (up above 3000 m, there’s mostly saueri and amoenus). In other cases, you can differentiate based on size (some species are bigger than others). However, at Kemburongoh, there are multiple species in the exact same site—so we’re hoping that their calls are significantly different and that we’ll be able to tease them apart that way. I’ll let you know what we find!

Another aspect of this week that I really enjoyed was hiking up and down all over the place—it was really challenging physically, but in a way that leaves you feeling like a million bucks at the end of the day. Mt. Kinabalu is incredibly steep, so the 6 km hike up to our cabin took about 2.5 hours. There are stretches of the trail that consist of high steps (yes, they have built steps out of rock and two-by-fours) for what feels like miles, but is really only a hundred meters or so. And because of the elevation, each step can feel like a real challenge—there were times when I was out of breath just from walking at a slow pace! But by the end of the week, Samantha and I managed to hike the steep 2 km from Kemburongoh to our cabin in about 45 minutes—woohoo! It was definitely a workout, but it felt fantastic, and I’m pleased that we acclimated and started getting used to the amazing workout that is Mt. Kinabalu.

As this week started drawing to its close, I found myself a bit nostalgic—I really do love Sabah, and I have enjoyed my time here immensely. I think my Malay has improved quite a bit, and I’m pleased that I have picked up some Dusun. I’m going to miss being here on Kinabalu, and I hope that I’ll be able to create more projects in the future that involve work on this mountain. I think it’s a spectacular spot for field work—the steep elevation gradient allows you to survey a wide array of environments in a relatively short distance. There are all sorts of ecological and evolutionary questions that can be addressed, and I really love working with the Park staff. I look forward to a long future of collaboration and work here in my Asians home away from home.

On Tuesday I head to KK, then fly back to Singapore on Thursday, and on Friday I’ll be going to the US for a week for my brother’s wedding. I absolutely can’t wait! It will be great to be home and to see friends and family before coming back for my field season in Thailand. My first update from there should be coming your way around the 7th of August—I look forward to catching up with you then!