Loholoka Forest, Manakara, Madagascar.
Myself and a team of 5 Zoology undergraduate students, in August 2017, will be traveling to the Loholoka Forest to conduct terrestrial biodiversity surveys following on from previous research, that indicated high levels of biodiversity.
Project Loholoka, will focus on the same humid coastal forest as Expedition Loholoka 2014. It currently has no conservation measures in place, although a preliminary study by our collaborators, DBCAM (Development and Biodiversity Conservation Action for Madagascar), suggested the area was rich in vertebrate biodiversity. Expedition Loholoka 2014 confirmed this and recorded 94 species: 11 Mammals (4 Lemurs), 60 Birds, 12 Reptiles and 11 Amphibians, which includes 4 endangered and 4 vulnerable species.
Due to the timescale of our project, we choose to focus just on vertebrate biodiversity. We will be replicating the surveys of three years ago to see how the biodiversity of the forest has changed, whilst testing the amphibians we survey for chytrid fungus. Survey methods include scan searching, line transects, and traps.