Imagine being a frog during the chaos of the breeding season and navigating the gathering crowds around the pond. How do you know who might be a suitable mate let alone whether they are male or female? One solution is colour. If one sex, typically males, is able to turn on some bright colour that […]
Category: Frog
After attending the 8th World Congress of Herpetology in China, I had a night and a day in South Korea before flying on to my next destination, the US. What to do? As it turned out, I had a windfall (thanks Julia). I met Amaël Borzée, a PhD student from Seoul National University. Amaël has […]
A major interest in our lab is social behaviour and why animals live in groups. Group formation has evolved numerous times independently in many different species. Understanding the proximate mechanisms and ultimate (evolutionary) factors driving group formation is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Stephan Leu recently spent time in the Lizard Lab and we […]
Since its introduction to Queensland in 1935, the cane toad (Rhinella marina) has spread westwards across northern Australia, is now present in all but one of the major regions of the Wet-Dry tropics, and has just started to spread into the last region – the pristine Kimberley wilderness. While a review of available data suggests […]
Dynamic (physiological) colour change in the context of sexual selection is almost unstudied in frogs. The whirring tree frog (Litoria revelata) is one of several Australian frogs which use colour during sexual advertisement. Grant Webster’s honours project is to test whether colour is indicative of male quality. To this end, he is measuring the colour […]
Here is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Max Mason, reporting on work recently published by Phil Byrne and Martin Whiting. Best to sleep around to help the kids – if you’re a frog
Here is an Australian Geographic report on all Phil’s hard work in the field! Harmonious orgy is winning formula for frogs – Australian Geographic.