PS 8-74 - How frog communities interact with their microhabitat? - A case study from Indo-Burma hotspot

Background/Question/Methods

Frog species, often used as biological indicators, face extinction threats due to a minor change in their physical environment. Understanding the influence of microhabitats on the forest-dwelling frog community is essential for the conservation management of the species. The dynamic relationship between microhabitat and frog communities varies across different habitat types and geographic regions. We aim to evaluate the relationship between environmental variables and the frog community from a protected area within the Indo-Burma hotspot. We conducted a visual encounter survey along with the transect line to estimate the frog species diversity and relative abundance. We estimated leaf litter coverage, forest type, canopy openness, distance from the nearest water source, bush area coverage as environmental variables. We applied generalized linear model (GLM) to find the best model to describe frog abundance. Also, we conducted model-based ordination analysis to assess the association between frog community and key environmental variables.

Results/Conclusions

Our findings with GLM indicated that the model with canopy openness, forest type and bush area openness constitute the best model for frog community assessment. We found a moderate canopy level with bushy area coverage contributing to the frog's relative abundance. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) showed frogs from the ‘Megophyridae’ family prefer old-growth mixed forest with presence of leaf litter. Canopy coverage and bushy area coverage showed a strong association with the species from the ‘Microhylidae’ and ‘Dicroglossidae’ families. These three frog families constitute most of the sightings during the study. Our findings indicated that having a complex forest mosaic is essential to have a balanced frog community with diverse species groups. Finally, our result could shed light on the management of the forest ecosystems by deepening our understanding of the frog community ecology.