A new species of Arthroleptis, the group of frogs that
is the focus of much of Dave’s research.

The Mambilla Plateau is in Taraba State, which is located on the far eastern edge of Nigeria. Some parts of Taraba State are at low elevations, but the state capital, Gombe, is located up on the plateau about an hour drive from the NMFP field station. Most of the plateau is covered in open grasslands that are used for grazing and farming by local residents. In the valleys of these grasslands, there are small forests along the streams; this type of forest is called a “riparian forest.” When you look at this landscape from far away, it looks like a patchwork of grasslands with little fingers of riparian forests wiggling their ways through the small valleys. On the western edge of the plateau, as well as in a few other areas, there are some patches of real montane forests (“mountain forests”). One of these patches, the Ngel Nyaki (“Ghel-en-yah-key”) Forest Reserve, is less than 10 square kilometers but has one of the most diverse assemblages of plants anywhere in Nigeria. Next to the Ngel Nyaki is the small NMFP field station. Professor Hazel Chapman, a botanist from the University of Canterbury, started the field station with the goal of preserving this important forest. Hazel’s father (now in his 90s) is also a botanist, and together he and Hazel recently published the most comprehensive survey of the plants of this part of Nigeria.

Looking westwards over the forests of the Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve towards a rainstorm.

I visited the NMFP field station in early-to-mid April, which is the tail-end of the dry season. The main goal of this visit was to check out the field station, meet Hazel and others associated with NMFP and Gombe State University, and to make the very first surveys of frogs in and around Ngel Nyaki. In short, it was a very successful trip, and it was a lot of fun to see this excellent little field station and to make contact with new colleagues from both New Zealand and Nigeria.

Because the real rainy season hadn’t arrived yet, I don’t think I caught the full diversity of frogs at Ngel Nyaki. In some cases, I was only able to catch the tadpoles of particular species; I’ll have to return during the real rainy season to catch the adults of the same species. But it’s important to note that even just the tadpoles can give us a first peak into the diversity of frogs present in the forest. During previous work in Cameroon in 2006, I collected lots of adult frogs and tadpoles and, working with an undergrad in the lab at Harvard, I was able to get DNA data from both. This let me identify many of the tadpoles. This is important, because without these data is difficult to tell whether a particular tadpole and an adult are actually the same species. Now, since I know what these tadpoles look like, I can at least do a preliminary identification of some of the tadpoles at Ngel Nyaki. Beginning in the summer of 2009, I will also get DNA data from these new tadpoles from Nigeria. As we combined this data with the data from Cameroon, we can begin to get a picture of what species might be present at Ngel Nyaki.

That said, I still was able to catch some neat frogs, including at least one of which seems to be a new species. Because I’ve become familiar with the frog species found in the mountains in neighboring Cameroon, I’m fairly confident that something is a new species when I find it while I’m out in the field. However, scientists cannot publish claims based only on their hunches. To demonstrate that this is a new species to other researchers, I will do further research using comparative anatomy, DNA analysis, and other tools. I recorded a number of species from either the forest or the surrounding grassland and riparian forests. It is important to note that all of these records are important to our understanding of this part of Nigeria. Very little work had been done here previously; in fact, we only knew about two species of frogs recorded from the plateau near Ngel Nyaki, and both were grassland species.

The Nigerian Montane Forest Project field station overlooking the eastern edge of the Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve.

The forests of Ngel Nyaki are special because they have some interesting and charismatic “mega-fauna” (large animals—at least bigger than frogs!), including chimpanzees and turacos (a type of medium-to-large tropical bird). The chimpanzees that occur in Ngel Nyaki and the neighboring Kurmi Danko forest are special because they are one of very few populations of the endangered Nigerian Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes vellerosus; note that there has been a recent move to call this P. t. ellioti instead).

Ngel Nyaki is an ideal place to return for field study and more detailed surveys. I am keen to use the NMFP field station as a resource for students interested in understanding the ecology and natural history of some of the many odd species of frogs found in this part of Africa. There is a lot of work still to do.

I was fortunate to be able to attend what might be one of NMFP’s biggest achievements: the opening of a new nursery school in the village of Yelwa. This was funded through a collaboration with ExxonMobil (i.e., ESSO). There were hundreds of children and people from the village in addition to lots of people involved with education and local government in Taraba State. There was even dancing and music!

While I was at Ngel Nyaki, there was truly an “international” feel to this small field station. In addition to myself, there were several visiting researchers (including Hazel) from New Zealand, lecturers from Nigeria’s Gombe State University (who are also current or beginning Ph.D. students at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand), undergraduate B.Sc. students from Gombe State University, and a team of local field assistants from Yelwa village. The field station has a number of bedrooms, a herbaria (a “library” of plant samples), and a small library with several computers run off of a generator. The field station has a very nice veranda that overlooks the edge of Ngel Nyaki forest, which allows for good view of monkeys and birds in the treetops and storms rolling onto the plateau. My visit to the field station was a fabulous opportunity to meet local students and researchers and do some work with them in the forests.

Importantly, funding from Project Exploration enabled me to contribute some additional important resources to the NMFP library.