Bioinformatics

Student Projects

A Report on the Frogs of Your District

A Report on the Frogs of Your District

Photo by Peter Robertson © Museum Victoria

1. Frogs of your District
2. Frog Classification
3. Related Species
4. Frog Distribution
5. Frog Toxicity
6. Frog Images and Calls
7. Your Report

Use the information in the Bioinformatics Data Base to prepare a report on the frogs of your district. This can be done as an individual student project, or as a class project with each student researching one frog. Primary school students will need a little assistance to interpret what they find out, but secondary school students should be able to work alone.

The first thing to do is to decide what form your report will take. It could be an article for the school magazine, a report to the school community, or a major feature in the local newspaper. It could also simply be a poster, or a talk presented to the class, but if done carefully, should be a useful addition to the environmental knowledge and awareness of the school community.

To begin your research, the class should do the first task (Frogs of Your District) together. Once you have a list of the frogs recorded in your district, the work of researching each frog (or a selection of them) can proceed, with each student taking responsibility for one frog.

1. Frogs of your District

To obtain details of the frogs that have been recorded in your district by Museum Victoria, carry out the following search:

• To obtain a list of frogs for your city, town or district:

  • If you live in country Victoria, obtain a list of frogs for a block of land 30 minutes square (roughly 45 km x 55 km):

    Frog Checklist Map Search

    Click on the area in which your school or home is located to obtain your list. If you want to search an even larger area, click and highlight a few adjoining areas.

  OR

  • If you live in the Greater Melbourne area, obtain a list of frogs for a block of land 10 minutes square (roughly 15 km x 18 km):

    Frog Cumulative Checklist Map for the Greater Melbourne Area

    Click on the area in which your school or home is located to obtain your list. If you want to search an even larger area, click and highlight a few adjoining areas.

The list you have obtained will show you the names of the frogs which have been recorded in your area.

You might now like to find out a little more about some of the frogs on your list. Allocate the frog species to the students in the class and carry out the following searches for each frog.

2. Frog Classification

Classification Search

Enter the name of the frog you have chosen (one at a time, please!) and you will obtain a detailed account of its lineage (from kingdom, through phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, etc).

3. Related Species

Would you like to know what the close relatives of your frog are?

Nature's Family Tree or Hierarchical Searches

Enter the family name of the frog you have chosen and you will obtain a list of close relatives.

4. Frog Distribution

Where else in Victoria has the museum recorded sightings of your chosen frog? Carry out the following search:

Species Search

Enter the name of your frog, and find out how many records for the frog are held by Museum Victoria.

1. 'Click to View All Records' to obtain a list of all records of this frog recorded by Museum Victoria.
2. 'Click for Map of All Species' to obtain a list of where in Victoria the frog has been recorded. You will obtain six maps showing these locations. The maps are:
   • Plain map
   • Vegetation map
   • Altitude map
   • Rainfall map
   • Zoogeographic map
   • Rivers map
   Carefully examine each map and try to write statements about where your frog occurs in Victoria.
3. 'Click for Full Monthly Frequency Catches' to obtain graphs showing the months in which the museum has recorded your frog. Can you explain the results you optain?

5. Frog Toxicity

Find out how toxic the skin secretions of your frogs are.

Frog Toxin Potential Search

Enter the name of the frog you have chosen and obtain an indication of the toxicity of its skin secretions.

6. Frog Images and Calls

To obtain one or several images of your chosen frog, carry out the following search:

Image Search

Enter the name of your chosen frog and gain access to all the images of the frog that are on the data base. Click on thumbnails to access and enlarge images.

Click on the icon labelled 'Listen' above each enlarged image to hear the call of your frog.

In addition, you can listen to a full 40 minute narrated recording of all the calls of Victoria's frogs.

Please Note: you may need to download the free RealOne Player™ to hear the frog calls.

7. Your Report

Once you have finished the searches outlined above, you are ready to write your report. You may decide to supplement the data you have obtained with information from reference books in your library. This may provide you with additional information on frogs in general, or on the frog you have chosen. You may also decide to question your parents, neighbours or local naturalists about frog sightings. This will provide you with some indication of whether the number of frog species in your district has changed over the years.

A species identificaton key is provided to assist you with the identification of frogs:

Identification of Possible Species

When you feel you have enough material, you should write your report on the frog you have chosen. These individual reports can then be combined as a report on the frogs of your district. This could then be presented as:

• a school project
• a talk to your class or to a parents meeting
• a talk on the local radio station
• an article for the school magazine or the local paper

You will probably find that the information in the report is of interest to many people in your local area. The project will, therefore, be a good opportunity to publicise the school as well as making the local community more environmentally aware.