Megophrys nasuta

One of the group asked about Megophrys nasuta after looking it up online--yes, it is SO much like a leaf! And yes, they tend to be found in leafy areas--the forests here have a lot of leaf litter, and when you put them amongst a bunch of it, you can really see how fantastic their camo is. Below are a couple of photos I took the last time I was here in Sabah. Cute, eh?

27 June 2010 Kinabalu Park Headquarters, Sabah, Malaysia

Hi gang!

This week two exciting things happened—call recording and a Sabahan wedding. Cha-ching! I love weddings—and Sabahan weddings are spectacular. But first, the call recording.

We made call recordings for a couple of reasons. One is that we wanted to start a library of call recordings for Kinabalu Park so that future researchers can utilize it as a reference and quickly learn which calls are which. For this we recorded all the species we could get (about 5) at the Miki Survival Camp (about 1000 m elevation).

A quick note about frog calls: they are incredibly varied and in my opinion, spectacular. Some are long trills, some sound like insects, some are loud honks, and others sound like someone is laughing at you. I started doing call recording a few years ago for my dissertation, and it was very different from other frog work I had previously done. Usually my work is about finding as many frogs as possible in a given amount of time, or over a given distance. With call recording, the work is much slower paced and requires a lot of patience. Some frogs will stop calling when you approach, so you have to find one that is calling, then turn off your headlamp and wait for them to start calling again. Sometimes they don’t start up again and you have to move on to another frog after 20 minutes or so. Sometimes they hop away while your headlamp is off, but you don’t know that until you turn your headlamp on again 10-20 minutes later. But when it all comes together, it’s really amazing to hear the call through a microphone—you pick up on so many more subtleties of the call than you do when you just listen normally. Then later when you analyze the calls (using special software) you actually get to SEE the differences in a spectrogram. It’s fantastic.

So we started working on the call library for Kinabalu Park, and we also recorded the call of Leptobrachella baluensis, because Paul (our Sabah Parks counterpart) thinks that this might actually be two species. This species is great because the mature males are only about 15 mm long (!!) and the call is sort of a funny ratchet-y sound. We only recorded about 5 individuals, and we haven’t yet analyzed them, but offhand we think there might be two different calls—which could mean two different species, or huge call variation within a species. Both of which will be interesting and exciting! My other secret reason for wanting to make call recordings is because I’m convinced I can use frog calls to make a cool house music mix, or piece the sounds together so they sound like actual words for a conservation-themed song. In my head, it totally works. =)

Speaking of awesome music, the other highlight of the week was the wedding we went to last night. The younger sister of my former neighbor Rusinin got married, so we were invited to join the festivities. I have been to 3 previous weddings here in Sabah, and I have loved every one of them. There is always dancing, with the Sumazao (the Dusun dance) playing a prominent role, usually there is karaoke (in Malay, Dusun, and English), a set of huge gongs are played, and there is a ton of delicious food. In many cases, a water buffalo (kerbau) is slaughtered for the wedding, and the elder women of the family will make giant wok after giant wok full of kerbau rendang. Rice is made en masse and served from coolers (which ironically work to keep it warm). And if it’s a non-Muslim wedding, local rice wine is passed around. Sabahans are hugely warm and friendly anyways, but at weddings they really shine and I have always been made to feel like a very special guest.

For many Sabahan weddings, there are multiple days of festivities. When I went to Justinah and Rusinin’s wedding many years ago, there was a ceremony at the mosque several days before the day of the wedding party. On the morning of the party, everyone gathers at the groom’s family’s house to eat, drink and socialize. From there, guests proceed in a caravan to the bride’s family’s house. The best part of the caravan is the truck that has the gongs—there are brass gongs in a series of sizes that get played the entire way to the bride’s house. Each gong gets played in a different rhythm, and there are multiple “songs” that can be played. At the bride’s house, the groom and his parents approach the bride and her parents, and when they meet they exchange greetings and blessings and the bride is united with the groom. Then everyone enters the bride’s family house for more food and drink and socializing. Later in the evening, the proper party gets going.

Last night we met up with Justinah and Rusinin in their kampung (village) and walked the few houses down to the wedding party together. The party was held in an open-air area attached to the bride’s parents’ house—a sort of extended patio had been erected from plastic tarpaulin and bamboo just for the wedding, a fantastic example of Sabahan innovation. After being introduced to the parents of the bride and groom, we were directed straight to the food—eggplant sambal, beef rendang, stir-fried veggies, a salad of pineapple, carrot slices, onions, and cucumbers…mmmm…no kerbau this time, but it was all delicious.

The evening progressed into a happy chaos of gong-playing, karaoke, dancing, and much interaction with the mob of kids. Everyone on our team took turns at the gongs;

Samantha, Anne, and I sang “Change the World” by Eric Clapton and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” because those were the only English karaoke songs we knew; we all danced the Sumazao many times and we managed to rope nearly every kid in the village into dancing with us.

The kids were probably the highlight of the evening for everyone—they all started out really really shy, and afraid to talk to any of us. But we were able to slowly convince them to dance, which led to some minor conversation, and then later each member of our team was surrounded by about 10 kids each, exchanging funny faces, basic questions in mixed English and Malay, and periodic dancing and singing. I think one of the reasons I like weddings in Sabah is because they remind me of Sheridan weddings—lots of dancing, heaps of kids, and good times all around. I’m looking forward to my brother’s wedding in just 2 weeks! I think this was a good warm-up for me.

Tomorrow morning I leave for my summit camping trip, though I use the term “camping” loosely—we’ll be staying in a cabin, which is lucky, because it will get down close to freezing at night up there. I’m eager to see how high the frogs go, and to try to tease out some cryptic species identifications using frog calls. Stay tuned for the results!

13 June 2010 Kinabalu Park Headquarters, Sabah, Malaysia

Hi gang!


What a week! I spent most of this week helping a colleague install pitfall traps. Pitfall traps are one means of sampling amphibians and reptiles, or other fossorial fauna (animals that live in the leaf litter or in the top layers of soil). Sam (my colleague) installed a series of 20 trap lines with three buckets in each line—imagine three buckets sunk into the ground in a relatively straight line, with a tarp suspended vertically between them that is buried slightly in the ground. The idea is that as animals move through the forest, some of them will run into the fence (the tarp) and move along it to try to get around it—then fall into one of the buckets. The traps (buckets) are checked every morning, and it’s a great way to see what is moving around on the forest floor. But it’s a lot of work to install! Sam had to walk up off the trail multiple times for each of the 20 sites, and when he found a good spot, Samantha (my field assistant) and I would follow his bush-whacked trail with our shovels to dig the holes for the buckets (about knee height and the same diameter across) and put up the fence. It would have been easy if it were just soil, but there are always roots to get through and sometimes rock…on top of that, we had to hike in with all of the equipment every day (buckets, huge rolls of tarp, string, and digging equipment), so the three of us are feeling quite strong, if not a bit bruised, blistered, and scratched up from all the rattan! We’re happy to have it all completed, and Sam can now start collecting his data.


The other thing I have been trying to work on this week is my Dusun. The official language of Sabah is Malay, but there are many local languages still widely spoken. Most people who live on and around Mt. Kinabalu speak Dusun—which in itself has several variants. For example, a friend of mine from Kota Belud said that the word for “delicious” is “ami” but another friend from close to Ranau has never heard that and instead uses the word “awasu.” I love the sound of Dusun—there are lots of g’s and k’s and ou’s and it’s really fun to speak. To say good morning, you say “osonong kosuobon” and how are you? is “okuro kuro habar nu?” Yesterday I learned how to say “what is your name?” which is “isai ngaran nu?”


There are a surprising number of ethnic groups in Sabah, all of which have their own language, traditional dress, and distinctive facial features. The Sabah Museum in Kota Kinabalu has a great display of the dress, traditions, locations, and home styles of the major groups, and I try to go every time I’m here to learn a bit more about them. I found out last time that in Kota Belud, which is not a large town, there are three endemic ethnic groups (Bajau, Dusun, and Inarun), as well as various Chinese immigrant groups. Many people thus also speak multiple languages (at a bare minimum, their own local language and Malay)--my friend from Kota Belud speaks eleven! The nice thing is that people here are genuinely happy and surprised when a white person (or “orang putih”) even attempts to speak Malay or Dusun—and they will always help you learn more and encourage you to continue, even if you make mistakes. I find it makes me want to try to learn and speak more every day, because people seem so appreciative. Plus it’s fun learning new languages—it’s sort of like a puzzle that you slowly put together until you’re able to get a pretty complete picture of what’s going on around you.


This week Samantha and I depart for a 9-day camping trip in which we will visit and survey three different elevations. It should be pretty interesting, given that it has been raining almost every day! So that should make the trail pretty slippery and challenging, and make it difficult to stay warm and dry! The things I do for these frogs…


I hope you are all well, and I look forward to getting your questions about Sabah and life in the field!

6 June 2010 Kinabalu Park Headquarters, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

Hi gang!

For the next 9 months or so I will be conducting biological field work in some pretty cool places—Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah, central Thailand, Danum Valley in Sabah, and a remote part of southeastern Sarawak. It’s such an amazing job and I felt like I should share it with you. I’ll do my best to write a bit each week to tell you about my work on frogs, the biodiversity in each of the places I work, the various cultures and histories of the areas, the food, and what life is like in the field.

Tonight was our 3rd night of field work, and it marks the end of my first week in Sabah. With field work, there is always some level of administrative hoop-jumping in terms of getting your permits and arranging logistics like renting a field vehicle, finding housing, and sorting out field work schedules. Most researchers will complain about the permitting process in some way (I certainly have!) but in all honesty it’s not that bad—it just takes a long time and requires going to several offices, filling out forms, getting signatures, and repeating that about 10 times—both at the beginning when you submit your application, and at the end when you want to pick up your permit! But I now have permits for every place I will be working, so I’m happy.

The purpose of my project, and the reason I get to go to all of these great places is to survey frogs, in order to determine whether abundance and diversity throughout SE Asia have changed in the past 20-80 years. For the most part, this requires me to go out at night and look for frogs in a standardized way (which allows me to compare my results from each of the different sites). At most of the sites, I will also be conducting diurnal forest plot surveys—we mark off a standardized area and search the entire quadrat for every frog we can find. By doing this over a period of about 2 months at each site, we hope to find the majority of frogs that are at each place. Then we can compare our results with previous surveys in order to determine whether frog populations in SE Asia are declining. Let’s hope not!

Last night was a great night for field work. It was just about to rain when we started our survey, and all the frogs seemed to know it. We saw two species of Megophrys, several Leptobrachium montanum, and a cool Kaloula baluensis that seemed to prefer walking in very very slow motion rather than hopping. I heard him calling so we turned off our lights and waited until we could hear him again. When one of our team switched his headlamp back on, the little frog was crawling very very slowly, as if trying to escape unnoticed! It was super cute and I had to stifle my laughter so as not to disturb him too much. The other cool thing about this species (and all members of this genus) is that they exude a very very sticky substance as a defense mechanism, so when you pick them up to measure them, your hands often get covered in a sort of frog glue. The frogs use it to avoid being eaten by snakes—the snakes often drop the frog because of the mouthful of bad-tasting sticky goop they get. Not a bad way to avoid predation! To top it all off, we heard tarsiers calling throughout the night! I still haven’t seen one, but I haven’t given up hope.

As I’m getting reacquainted with the forest here, I’m reminded of all the great things I love about Sabah and Mt. Kinabalu. The mountain itself is stunning; it is home to the world’s largest moss—Dawsonia, which I love; the variety of birds and frogs and invertebrates is amazing; and the people here are some of the nicest and funniest I have ever met. I’ll do my best to write about all the great things here in the coming weeks, and I look forward to getting your questions! Have a great week, and as we say here, selamat tinggal!