About Frog Watch

Welcome to the Western Australian Museum's Frog Watch web site!

Western Australia is host to 85 native species. This count is growing higher, however, with new species added nearly every year. Discoveries of new species can occur while on expeditions to remote regions, and also through closer re-examination of widespread populations using the museum's collections, genetics and analysis of calls - all part of the main activities of the museum's researchers located in Welshpool in Perth.

WA is a third of the Australian continent, and accordingly this massive area embraces many diverse regions and habitats. Usually the frogs of a region occur only in that area, or occur in an adjacent region only with no frog species occurring across the whole state. This results in high local diversity within a region.

The WA frog fauna is divided into three main regions based on the climate and the types of frogs found there: the south-west, Kimberley and arid zone. The south-west region is further divided into five divisions to help south-westerners find out about their local frogs. The site is dynamic, and we will keep adding to the frog database as new species are discovered and described and new information learned about WA frogs.

The Frog Watch Resources section provides information on 'Building Frog-friendly Gardens', the CD of south-western frog calls and other WA Museum publications about frogs, including the Field Guide to Frogs of Western Australia (the main 'go-to' reference for WA frogs).

The Tadpole Exchange Program section explains how people with new frog-friendly ponds and yards are able to 'seed' their new pond with tadpoles from a neighbour.

We hope you enjoy experiencing the sights and sounds of WA frogs on our website, and your encounters with live frogs in your backyard and trips to the bush are also memorable. Importantly, we believe that by knowing and understanding frogs, people will become champions for frog conservation in our wonderful and diverse state of Western Australia.

Paul Doughty
Western Australian Museum
Frog Watch web content manager