When, two years ago, he dug up an earthworm-like legless amphibian of the chikilid family in the deep forests of Meghalaya, he was holding in his hands one of the few living species that shared the earth with the dinosaurs. That discovery, published last fortnight in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London after strenuous scientific scrutiny and recognised protocols, has proven that India's forests are a treasure trove of evolutionary secrets.
In 2003, Biju and his team had given science another wonderful story of survival from the Jurassic age. The purple frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis), which he discovered in the Western Ghats near Idukki in Kerala, also shared space with dinosaurs and survived through four mass extinctions. Amphibians were the first creatures to venture on land, having evolved from fish. These early amphibians are the progenitors to all contemporary species, including reptiles, mammals and birds. They are the key to unlocking nature's big secrets, an incredible cache of information and survival skills that puts human achievements to shame. Today, there are three overarching families of amphibians: salamanders, frogs and caecilians.
For 30 years, Biju has been scouring India's forests, searching for the secrets that lie hidden, for species that could connect us to the advent of life, for a little squeak in time's silent aeonic theatre. “I go to see the forests. I watch the rains. I wait. I listen. If the frogs don't croak, that is also a question to be asked. It is not necessary that you will see or find something new. Nature will come to you. For me, spending a night time in a forest listening to the call of the frogs is eternally fascinating," says Biju, sitting in the systematics lab of the Centre for Environment Studies in Delhi University—flanked on all sides by formaldehyde bottles of creepies and crawlies.
For a man who, as he says, could have easily settled for a life of comfort as a professor with a steady paycheque handing out notes for rote learning, Biju's has been a refreshingly hands-on career. Over the last two decades, he has discovered and documented more than 150 species of amphibians, one of which, the Biju's Tree Frog (Polypedates bijui), is named after him. He has been published on 70 (of the 150) species, eight genera and two families. Each (re-)discovery of a species shifts the frontiers of science a wee bit more; Biju trudges along the edges of this betweenspace, where life is born or perishes in a wink of an eye.
Bittu Sahgal, editor of Sanctuary magazine says, “Biju's research and surveys, using students, communities and scientists, prove beyond doubt that half of all frogs face extinction. Apart from pure natural history insights, his team's consistent discovery of amphibian species suggests that all is not lost in the Indian subcontinent. Our wetlands hold the key to human survival in an era of climate change." The web of life has a billion unseen bits that keep the macrosystem running, Biju's colleague Aniruddha Mookherjee says, adding it's people like Biju who can make the government see how significant their point of view is. Read the full report here.
Source: by Binoo K. John, Outlook India.
