ARPHA Proceedings 6: 43-47, doi: 10.3897/ap.e126483

The citizen science project “AmphiBiom”: a quest to mitigate habitat loss for the European green toad

Stephan Burgstaller^‡, Janette Siebert^‡, Maria M. Krall^‡, Yurii V. Kornilev^‡, Magdalena Spießberger^‡, David Hamernik^‡, Janis Kremser^‡, Thomas Ofenböck^§, Johann G. Zaller^‡, Silke Schweiger^|, Wolfram Graf^‡, Daniel Dörler^‡, Florian Heigl^‡, Lukas Landler^‡

‡ BOKU University, Vienna, Austria§ Division Vienna Waters, Municipal of the City of Vienna, Vienna, Austria| Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Corresponding author: Lukas Landler ( lukas.landler@gmail.com )

© Stephan Burgstaller, Janette Siebert, Maria M. Krall, Yurii V. Kornilev, Magdalena Spießberger, David Hamernik, Janis Kremser, Thomas Ofenböck, Johann G. Zaller, Silke Schweiger, Wolfram Graf, Daniel Dörler, Florian Heigl, Lukas Landler.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Burgstaller S, Siebert J, Krall MM, Kornilev YV, Spießberger M, Hamernik D, Kremser J, Ofenböck T, Zaller JG, Schweiger S, Graf W, Dörler D, Heigl F, Landler L (2024) The citizen science project “AmphiBiom”: a quest to mitigate habitat loss for the European green toad. ARPHA Proceedings 6: 43-47. https://doi.org/10.3897/ap.e126483

Abstract

We aim to understand the distribution and environmental drivers for the occurrence of the European green toad (Bufotes viridis) in Austria and create breeding habitats for it. Citizen scientists can use a custom smartphone application (AmphiApp) to record data such as the calls of anurans and photographic documentation. The records are validated by experts. To provide breeding habitats for green toads, we gave citizen scientists 300 small plastic ponds (1.20L × 0.9W × 0.4D m) to place on their land (garden, backyard). These citizen scientists will monitor their pond every two weeks for two seasons (March–August 2024 & 2025) for the occurrence of amphibians and their invertebrate prey. During the first two months, most pond owners have been highly motivated and have followed the monitoring scheme, despite the involved procedure, likely due to our active engagement with them (e.g., during the pond delivery by team members, emails, phone calls and messaging within AmphiApp).

Keywords

AmphiApp, amphibian, aquatic invertebrates, breeding ponds, conservation, frogs, observational data, toads.