The first species to be discovered was the Southern Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobatracus silus) was the first found in the early seventies. The frog was known from both sides of the Conondale Valley but may have had a larger range and was already in decline. The frog was interesting in several respects and was first most known for being Australia's ONLY (apart from the other species later) aquatic frog. For many years it was unkown that these frogs were Gastric Brooding, but as some frog scientists are one working in Adelaide (and I have forgotten who exactly) at the time was very exited at the discovery of a new aquatic frog and as they do asked the Queensland people working on it to send him down so animals, they were of course happy to do so as they regularly went out and caught this frog, it being so interesting and not such a long way to go. When this scientist got to the airport to collect his frogs, being all excited as I presume many of you understand he could not help but open them up and take a squiz. He had a note saying, 'Three Gastric Brooding Frogs, 2 male, 1 female.' looking in the bag he counted 2 males, 1 female..... 2 babies, well thats ok Queenslanders sent me a couple bonus juvies. When he got back to the lab he realised another one or two juvies appeared and when he picked up the female it vomited a juvie into his hand, the first documented occurence of this to happen which ended up giving the frogs a new name, they had previously been called platypus frogs. This provided a great opportunity to environmentalists. This frog was so interesting and so wanted to be studied that the motto not to log the Conondale Range became "Don't Log The FROG", which did eventually result in the areas the frog was found in and the greater area of the Conondale not being logged. Over the next nearly a decade the frogs were regularly collected and used to try and understand Gastric Ulcers, (another team not working with frogs eventually cracked this using antibiotic based treatment I think), by the late 70s they noticed the frogs were very hard to find, but not understanding their ecology thought perhaps it was just a natural down cycle. By 1981 the last recorded Southern Gastric Brooding frog was found and then no more.
A couple years later in 1984 a group of biologists in a swimming hole happened to catch an odd looking frog, one of the biologists instantly recognized it and so was the discovery of the second Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobatricus vittelinus). The Queensland government with the "Don't Log the Frog" publicizing of the first frogs death and the many circulating theories was very cautious here. They put in place there very own scientist to monitor this frog and told everyone else, no touching. This scientist who lived permanently in a caravan where the frog was Known (from only appx 4 streams on Mt Dalrymple), produced a brilliant graph perfectly showing the decline of these frogs from some rather common, to nothing, and no intervention occurring anywhere in between, he literally monitored them into extinction.
And that is the story of the two Gastric Brooding Frogs. But that is not the important story, the important story is both why, and what this set off. While the first species may have been found in an area which was under some environmental pressures, the second species was found in pristine rainforest, never touched for logging, never touched for industry and with no known introduced species impacting the frogs in the area it was found. This disappearance of a frog is such pristine rainforest sparked scientists to look at frogs in another untouched place, the wet tropics wilderness area. To cut a very long story short, several species of day frog and further south the Tablelands Bell Frog were noticed missing. Later the first world conference of Herpetology got frog biologists from around the world together and it was realized there was a major frog crisis worldwide. In Australia the cause was first noticed by a pathologist at Taronga zoo who described it from the tadpoles of a day frog species as a protozoan. The cause was eventually identified not as a protozoan but as a fungi. Chytrid Fungus, and the same fungus, genetically identical, a clonal organism was found in dying frog species all over the world.
While in Australia this fungal disease has taken some 7 species from frogs leaving reptiles the only Australian vertebrate group with no extinctions, we must view ourselves as lucky. In South America the loss of species from the Harlequin Frog group would almost reach the number of species currently recognized in Australia.
It is an interesting point someone said the Eungella Day-frog was recently rediscovered which I had not heard, and I am almost positive I would have heard about such a rediscovery. However there was bright news as the Armored Mist Frog (at least I think is was lorika although it may have been nyakalensis) was most definitely rediscovered and there are still occasional reports of Taudactylus pleione calls from one isolated location although no definite finds.
