Biodiversity and local traditions

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 Biodiversity and local traditions

Telmatobius Culeus a specie in critical danger

During the first year of my specialisation in MEMED, I had the chance to learn about and work on amphibian species; accordingly, I understood the importance of human's actions on biodiversity, and mostly on one of the biggest aquatic frogs in the world, the frog of the Titicaca Lake, in Bolivia.

Bolivia counts with twelve ecological regions in which about 50% of the global biodiversity can be found, which demonstrates the importance of studying the endemic species of this territory; in fact, the matter of focus in our case is the study of anthropic causes of biodiversity declines.

Biodiversity exists today because there are so many rates of speciation, in addition to the extinction rate; almost 99% of all species that lived in the world are now extinct. The speciation rates are the result of many factors; one of them is the geographic expansion of populations and their dispersal as a movement in search of a favourable place to live. Even thought, most of the time, humans are not helping at preserving this diversity of the world species.

The purpose of this work is to present some of the threat factors affecting this amphibian specie and also an alternative way to raise awareness of populations with respect to the biodiversity preservation.

Telmatobius Culeus and local traditions

About the specie we are studying now, it was discovered in 1876 by GARMAN, it is distributed in the ecoregion of Punata Norteña in the department of La Paz in Bolivia and Puno in Peru. This specie of frogs lives totally under water and its excess of skin permits it to breath without needing to surface.

The threats facing this species are mostly anthropic, its extremities being commercialised for years to be used in traditional medicine cocktails (and in some cases for eating) and another factor being represented by the water contamination of the Titicaca Lake due to the use of pesticides by the agriculture sector in the area.

According to the Libro Rojo de Bolivia 2009, Telmatobius Culeus is classified as an endangered species since 2003. This fact was supposed to help the population realise the impact of its massive 2

consumption, of the substantial pollution in this area and the importance of preserving it. Even though, since then, things have changed, but in a negative way; in 2008 it became an amphibian classified as being in critical danger.

Actions for the preservation of the specie

During the same year, a local museum from Cochabamba begun an experimental project of captive breeding of Telmatobius gender species. The objective of the program was to realise an action plan for the conservation of endemic bolivian species. Their work consist in research, monitoring and reintroduction of frogs in their natural ecosystem and also by raising awareness about their critical situation.

Since more than 10 years, the last individual known of the Telmatobius Culeus, specie of the Titicaca Lake (male), was captured and monitored at the Museum Alcide d'Orbigny with the intention of preserving the specie by managing it reproduction. In order to realise this goal it was necessary to find a female partner, this action requires financial support in order to be managed.

The approach used by the organisation was interesting; in order to collect funds for the project they established a partnership with the dating website Match. In that way "Romeo", the last male Telmatobius had become famous, population started to pay more attention to the situation and also many expeditions intended to find a partner for reproducing the specie were made during the rainy season thanks to the collected funds. The expeditions permitted the team of the Centro K'ayra to find the "Juliette" during January 2019 and that is what also permitted the consideration of maintaining the endemic specie.

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