Leo DiCaprio shares picture of galaxy frog shot by Indian researcher

A galaxy frog looks like an archetypal alien popularised by Hollywood scifi thrillers but thats not the reason why a picture of it shot by Sandip Das an Indian researcher has got Leonardo DiCaprio to share it on InstagramA National Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Zoology Calicut University Kerala Das was a part of the team that studied the amphibian population of the Western GhatsAnd it was while conducting the study that he shot the frogs picture which accompanied a scholarly article that appeared in the reputed scientific journal Nature Das contributed to the articleView this post on InstagramA post shared by Leonardo DiCaprio leonardodicaprioDiCaprio a committed campaigner on climate issues noted in his Instagram post Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally according to a new paper published in Nature reports The actor went on to summarise the article and notedTwo decades worth of data from around the world has found that climate change has emerged as one of the biggest threats to frogs salamanders and caecilians he notedThe assessment evaluated the extinction risk of more than 8000 amphibian species from all over the world including 2286 species evaluated for the first time More than 1000 experts across the globe contributed their data and expertise which found that two out of every five amphibians are threatened with extinctionThe goblinlike galaxy frog is therefore one of the rare surviving members of the species And it could disappear one dayIn his long caption accompanying Dass picture DiCaprio said Climate change is especially concerning for amphibians in large part because they are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment The Nature paper provides an update to the 2004 landmark paper that was based on the first global amphibian assessment for the IUCN Red List which revealed the unfolding amphibian crisis for the first time and established a baseline for monitoring trends and measuring conservation impactAs many as 100 researchers including Das participated in writing the article which was published in Nature on October 4This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever