Zombie ants, rocket frogs and mosquito-eating fish are just a handful of the animals found by a team of scientists on a field trip in the Northern Territory. It's part of an effort to map the biodiversity of some of the country's less-understood ecosystems.
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00:00I can just see an eyeball on the middle of the rock.
00:06Late at night at a waterhole in Nitmaluk National Park,
00:09Dr Jodie Rowley can see frogs everywhere.
00:12So it's a Spaulding's rocket frog.
00:14They do have just enormous thighs and jet propulsion.
00:17We still don't know how many frogs or reptiles we have.
00:20Estimates are that maybe 20% of Australia's frogs and reptiles
00:23still don't have a scientific name.
00:25And in the last month there was four new species of frog described in Australia.
00:31So we're hoping on this trip we're filling in some of those gaps,
00:34getting a better handle on things,
00:36maybe, hopefully, discovering new species to science.
00:39Dozens of the country's top scientists spent weeks on Jawan country near Catherine
00:44on a mission to better understand this region's unique plants and animals,
00:48working with indigenous rangers and using helicopters to reach parts of the Arnhem Plateau
00:54that are rarely seen.
00:55There's these beautiful micro-habitats and deep chasms in the stone country,
01:01all of which could potentially harbour evolved species just in that tiny micro-habitat.
01:07Already it looks like new species of bugs and fungi may have been discovered.
01:13And they now have a better understanding of the expanding habitat of many more species.
01:18And it becomes a baseline for that point in time.
01:21So in 10 years' time if it was done again, or in 20 or 30 years,
01:25if a whole group of butterflies aren't there, something's happening.
01:29While the scientists continue to analyse samples from the trip,
01:32they say they can't catalogue Australia's biodiversity alone,
01:35asking members of the public to help through citizen science programs
01:39like Frog ID and iNaturalist.
01:42We actually need everybody out there making these discoveries in their backyard,
01:47when they go camping.
01:48You know, citizen science has been a massive game changer.
01:51A biodiversity puzzle that will take many hands to solve.
01:55And then I'll put it in there.
01:56And I'll see you guys later.
01:57So I'll see you guys now I'll see you guys later.
01:59So we've done this all before.
02:00And as you say, it's just a tiny pet,
02:02you can see the whole thing about it when the plants are growing.
02:04This is a very avocado.
02:05And this is a more тон.
02:07So we're going to have a stronger pet,
02:09we're going to have a lot of water with plants,
02:11we've got a strong pet grow,
02:12and this is a very small little group that we're trying to see.
02:13It's a beautiful, right?
02:15We've got a lot of water with plants and,
02:17so we've got a lot of water and plants,
02:19so we've got to eat them with this.
02:20We've got a lot of water.
02:22We're going to get some water.