A new location for the critically endangered Giant barred river frog, Mixophyes iteratus

Giant barred river frog, Mixophyes iteratus 

The "Great barred Frogs" really copped a pounding when the Chytrid fungus made it's presence known in Australia.  The genus is known as "Mixophyes" and there are three species found in the Hunter valley; M.balbus, M.fasciolatus, and M.iteratus.  Only M.fasciolatus survived the onslaught and retained a shadow of their former numbers.  The other two declined in the Hunter valley to the point where we feared they were lost forever.

I have used the scientific names as the "common names" are pretty useless for this species group.  How many permutations of Giant barred river frog, Great barred river frog and "Stuttering river frog" can you distinguish between and remember?  We serious herpetologists simply call them "iteratus", "fass" and "balbus".  

I will never forget visiting a State Forest well to the north of here with legendary frog expert, Dr Michael Mahony.  It was mid-1990's and we spent a week experiencing evenings of unbelievable herpetological joy - a certain stream, deep within the rainforest that echoed all night long with the rich and extremely deep and guttural calls of Mixophyes iteratus.  I will never forget that week as long as I live, and the sound of the calls of hundreds of these massive frogs echoing through the rainforest.  Waaark, Waaark, Waaark, Waaark, Waaark, Waaark, followed by that series of unique trills.  I am getting shivers down my spine as I write this.  

A particularly memorable aspect of this trip was our first encounter with a most unusual prey item.  We collected a small number of specimens under the extremely strict terms of Mike's scientific research licence.  One frog I personally caught had a couple of strange marks on it's throat - I bagged it and showed it to Mike.  We were both staring at this odd looking specimen when without warning it regurgitated an extremely angry Northern tree funnelweb spider ! ! ! !  We were both utterly gobsmacked.  The frog displayed no ill effects whatsoever and was still very alert and happy the next morning.  Mike & I were a bit taken a-back & relieved that neither of us were bitten by the spider.  

Although we laughed about it at the time, and thought that it was truly a one-off near-miss, it turned out to be a far from once in a lifetime occurrence.  A decade later, a very good friend of mine had exactly the same thing happen while working on this species at the same location with Mike.  Only this time, John didn't see the frog regurgitate the spider in the bag and was actually bitten by an extremely, extremely angry Northern tree funnelweb through the bag.  Make no mistake, this was a life and death situation, with a hideously venomous spider.  After a truly harrowing experience, it turned out to be a dry bite.  The spider had either spent all of its venom in the frog, or the plastic bag prevented a medically important dose of venom reaching John's fingers.  Phew ! 

Back to the local situation.  M.iteratus is well known from the State forests of the Hunter valley.  However, it's population was devastated by Chytrid.  Look up "Chytridiomycosis" if you'd like a taste of how utterly destructive this pathogen has been.  Despite spending many, many hours in local prime habitat during ideal weather patterns for the best part of a decade, I found only one specimen of M.iteratus in all that time.  I found maybe twenty specimens of M.balbus over that same period.  I found literally several hundred M.fasciolatus per year over that time.  The quiet consensus among professional herpetologists was that M.iteratus was locally extinct, and M.balbus was in dire straights.  It painted my experiences in the northern forests with Mike in their true light.  That location was the ONLY place on the entire planet where this animal was still found.  It was considered to be extinct in ALL of it's other known range . . .

We found a very large pregnant female specimen of M.iteratus last year.  It was in a location that was well-known for the species, so I made a record in my field journal and took a metric ton of photographs.  Last Saturday night, during the heatwave conditions, my wife & I found a male specimen in a completely new location.  We took a couple of voucher photos to enable a professional to be confident of our identification, took a GPS reading and moved on, smiling from ear to ear.  We are so happy this species is slowly clawing it's way back from the tottering edge of near extinction.