Tim Cutajar in the field

Tim Cutajar

Staff Profile
Timothy Cutajar

Key Info

  • Position Title
    PhD Candidate, UNSW Sydney, Australian Museum & University of Copenhagen; Technical Officer
  • Section
    Herpetology Collection
    Division
    Australian Museum Research Institute

Email Tim Cutajar

I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW Sydney, with the Australian Museum and the University of Copenhagen.

I am interested in technologies that inform how biodiversity is distributed for data-driven conservation. I investigate environmental DNA methods for increasing vertebrate species detectability, and use varied techniques including water and air sampling, and parasitic invertebrate collection for detection of vertebrates via blood meals. Citizen science and collections-based data also inform my research on species’ conservation statuses and needs.

Professional Memberships:

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor of Science (Biology) (Hons. Class 1), UNSW Sydney, Australia (2019).
  • Bachelor of Biodiversity & Conservation, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (2014).

Rediscovering Australia's Lost Frogs

Join Australian Museum and UNSW Sydney PhD Candidate and #NatGeoExplorer Tim Cutajar as he searches for the feared-extinct, Southern Gastric Brooding frog in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

[Music]

We're in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland

of Australia looking for probably the

weirdest frog you've never heard of the

Southern gastric brooding frog it's got

a very strange name because it's got a

very strange strategy for raising its

young females of this species used to

eat their own eggs those eggs would then

produce a chemical sign sign to the

stomach telling it to stop producing

digestive acids essentially turning it

into a uterus there they would develop

into tadpoles and then into baby frogs

and the female would then vomit them up

when they're ready to go out into the

world the reason we're looking for this

species is it actually went missing in

the very early 80s and sadly now it's

believed to be extinct

[Music]

there are so many unknowns in the

world's wild places uh many species

could be declared extinct prematurely

just because they've become a little bit

more rare a bit more difficult to detect

or they live in a place that's difficult

for humans to access and search for

[Music]

them nearly every year species that we

believed were extinct are being

rediscovered and none more so than frogs

It's My Hope that here in these remote

rainforests where there are hidden

gorges and difficult to access Creeks

there might be a population of the

Southern gastric brooding frog just

hanging on to

[Music]

survival this species is a symbol of

modern Extinction in Australia so other

people have gone looking for it before

but not quite the way that we are we

have been doing traditional surveys

which for frogs is usually walking up a

creek at night and listening and looking

for the Frog itself but we're also doing

something new and that's using

environmental DNA all animals leave DNA

traces of themselves everywhere they go

it's how forensic scientists can catch

criminals but it's also how we can

detect rare species without NE

necessarily seeing them

[Music]

ourselves we've been taking samples from

water air and even frogs parasites in

the hope to forensically detect this

missing

[Music]

species there are these flies called

frog biting flies they're much like

mosquitoes in that female's knee need a

blood meal to reproduce but unlike most

mosquitoes they get that blood meal

specifically from frogs and they find

frogs in a pretty cool and surprising

way they listen for them frog biting

flies follow the sound of calling male

frogs to get the blood they need and

that makes them really easy to collect

all we have to do is set up fly traps in

the forest with a speaker broadcasting

frog calls and that attracts frog biting

flies from throughout the forest

including FES that have potentially fed

on the rare frog species that we are

looking

for once we have those flies we can take

them into the lab and extract the frog

DNA from the blood they have in their

bellies and forensically detect frogs

including rare frogs frogs that we might

not necessarily have seen or heard

during our time in the

[Music]

field essentially these frog biting

flies are way better at finding frogs

than we are so why not add them to the

team it's my hope that some of the frog

biting flies we've been collecting here

have been feeding on the southern

gastric breeding frog and we'll get a

detection for that species and find out

that it's still here

[Music]

[Music]

Publications

2023

  • Luedtke, J., Chanson, J., Neam, K., Hobin, L., Maciel, A.O., Catenazzi, A., Borzée, A., Hamidy, A., Aowphol, A., Jean, A., Sosa-Bartuano, A., Fong G. A., de Silva, A., Fouquet, A., Angulo, A., Kidov, A.A., Muñoz Saravia, A., Diesmos, A.C., Tominaga, A., Shrestha, B., Gratwicke, B., Tjaturadi, B., Martínez Rivera, C.C., Vásquez Almazán, C.R., Señaris, C., Chandramouli S.R., Strüssmann, C., Fabiola, C., Fernández, C., Azat, C., Hoskin, C.J., Hilton-Taylor, C., Whyte,D.L., Gower, D.J., Olson, D.H., Cisneros-Heredia, D.F., José Santana, D., Nagombi, E., Najafi-Majd, E., Quah, E.S.H., Bolaños, F., Xie, F., Brusquetti, F., Álvarez, F.S., Andreone, F., Glaw, F., Enrique Castañeda, F., Kraus, F., Parra-Olea, G., Chaves, G., Medina-Rangel, G.F., González-Durán, G., Mauricio Ortega-Andrade, H., Machado, I.F., Das, I., Dias, I.R., Nicolas Urbina-Cardona, J., CrnobrnjaIsailović, J., Yang, J.H., Jianping, J., Tshelthrim Wangyal, J., Rowley, J.J.L., Measey, J., Vasudevan, K., Onn Chan, Vasudeva Gururaja, K., Ovaska, K., Warr, L.C., Canseco-Márquez, L., Felipe Toledo, L., Díaz, L.M., Khan, M.H., Meegaskumbura, M., Acevedo, M.E., Felgueiras Napoli, M., Ponce, M.A., Vaira, M., Lampo, M., Yánez-Muñoz, M. H., Scherz, M.D., Rödel, M.O., Matsui, M., Fildor, M., Kusrini, M.D., Ahmed, M.F., Rais, M., Kouamé, N.G., García, N., Gonwouo, N.L., Burrowes, P.A., Imbun, P.Y., Wagner, Kok, P.J.R., Joglar, R.L., Auguste, R.J., Albuquerque Brandão, R., Ibáñez, R., von May, R., Hedges, S,B., Biju, S.D., Ganesh, S.R., Wren, S., Das, S., Flechas, S.V., Ashpole, S.L., Robleto-Hernández, S.J., Loader, S.P., Incháustegui, S.J., Garg, S., Phimmachak, S., Richards, S.J., Slimani, T., Osborne-Naikatini, T., Abreu-Jardim, T.P.F., Condez, T.H., De Carvalho, T.R., Cutajar, T.P., Pierson, T.W., Nguyen, T.Q., Kaya, U., Yuan, Z., Long, B., Langhammer, P., Stuart, S.N. (2023). Ongoing declines for the world’s amphibians in the face of emerging threats. Nature. full text
  • Cutajar, T. P., & Pulsford, S. A. (2023) Incidental invertebrate-derived DNA detection of invasive and threatened species in temperate dry Southeast Australian forest. Austral Ecology 00, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1111/aec.13307

2022

  • Cutajar, T., & Rowley, J. J. L. (2022). The utility of acoustic citizen science data in understanding geographic distributions of morphologically conserved species: frogs in the Litoria phyllochroa species group. Journal of Herpetology. 56 (3): 318–323.
  • Mahony, S. M., Cutajar, T., Rowley, J. J. L. (2022). A new species of Delma Gray 1831 (Squamata: Pygopodidae) from the Hunter Valley and Liverpool Plains of New South Wales. Zootaxa 5162 (5): 541–556. abstract
  • Cutajar, T.P., Portway, C.D., Gillard, G.L. and Rowley, J.J.L. (2022). Australian Frog Atlas: species’ distribution maps informed by the FrogID dataset. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum, Online 36: 1–48. full text

2021

  • Tapley, B., Nguyen, L.T., Nguyen, C.T., Hoang, G.T. & Cutajar, T.P. (2021) Oviposition sites of the Hoang Lien Horned Frog, Megophrys hoanglienensis (Tapley et al., 2018). Herpetology Notes. 14: 937-939. full text.
  • Tapley, B., Cutajar, T., Nguyen. L.T., Portway, C., Mahony, S., Nguyen, C.T., Harding, L., Luong, H.V., & Rowley, J.J.L. (2021). A new potentially Endangered species of Megophrys from Mount Ky Quan San, northwest Vietnam. Journal of Natural History. 54: 2543-2575. full text.

2020

  • Alabai, M., Esau, T., Kekeubata, E., Esau, D., Waneagea, J., Lobotalau, L., Alick, J., Silas, J., Solome, L., Waneagea, J., Mousisi, K., Cutajar, T.P., Portway, C.D., MacLaren, D.J., & Rowley, J.J.L. (2020). Apparent absence of the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) in frogs in Malaita Province, Solomon Islands. Pacific Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1071/PC20047
  • Nguyen, L. T., Tapley, B., Cutajar, T., Nguyen, C.T., Portway, C., Harding, L., Luong, H.V. & Rowley, J.J.L. (2020). A description of the tadpole of the Critically Endangered Botsford’s leaf-litter frog (Leptobrachella botsfordi) with comments on the distribution and conservation status of the species. Zootaxa. 4860: 293–300. abstract.
  • Tapley, B., Nguyen, L.T., Cutajar, T., Nguyen, C.T., Portway, C., Van Luong, H., and Rowley, J.J.L. (2020). The tadpoles of five Megophrys Horned frogs (Amphibia: Megophryidae) from the Hoang Lien Range, Vietnam. Zootaxa, 4845 (1): 35–52. abstract
  • Tapley, B., Nguyen, L.T., Portway, C., Cutajar, T., Nguyen, C.T., Van Luong, H., Kane, D., Harding, L. & Rowley, J.J.L. (2020) A point endemic no more; a range extension for Oreolalax sterlingae (Nguyen et al., 2013) in Bat Xat District, Lao Cai Province, northern Vietnam. Herpetology Notes. 13, 497-500.full text
  • Portway, C.D., Cutajar, T.P., King, A. & Rowley, J.J.L. (2020) First evidence of the amphibian chytrid fungus likely driving dramatic frog community changes on the New England Tablelands of Eastern Australia. Herpetological Review. 51 (2), 247-251.
  • Portway, C.D., Cutajar, T.P. & Rowley, J.J.L. (2020) Survey for amphibian chytrid fungus infection in the enigmatic Green-thighed Frog (Litoria brevipalmata). Herpetological Review. 51 (2), 252-253.
  • Cutajar, T.P. and Rowley, J.J.L. (2020) Surveying frogs from the bellies of their parasites: invertebrate-derived DNA as a novel survey method for frogs. Global Ecology & Conservation. e00978.
  • Cutajar, T.P., Rowley, J.J.L., Nguyen, L.T., Nguyen, C.T., Portway, C., Harding, L., Luong, H.V. and Tapley, B. (2020) The advertisement call of Megophrys jingdongensis Fei and Ye, 1983 and a new record from Lai Chau Province, Northeast Vietnam. Herpetology Notes. 13: 139-143.

2019

  • Nguyen, L.T., Tapley, B., Cutajar, T.P., Nguyen, C.T., Portway, C., Harding, L., Van Luong, H. and Rowley, J.J.L. (2019) The first records of Limnonectes nguyenorum Mcleod, Kurlbaum & Hoang (Amphibia: Anura: Dicroglossidae) from lao Cai Province, northwest Vietnam. Proceedings of the 4th National Scientific Conference on Amphibians and Reptiles in Vietnam.
  • Rowley, J.J., Callaghan, C.T., Cutajar, T.P., Portway, C., Potter, K., Mahony, S., Trembath, D.F., Flemons, P. & Woods, A. (2019) FrogID: Citizen Scientists provide validated biodiversity data on frogs of Australia. Herpetological Conservation and Biology. 14 (1): 155-170.

2018

  • Rowley, J.J.L. & Cutajar, T.P. (2018) Rediscovery of the Booroolong Frog Litoria booroolongensis on the Australian New England Tablelands after more than 40 years.Herpetological Review. 49: 620-621.
  • Tapley, B., Cutajar, T.P., Nguyen, L.T., Nguyen, C.T., Harding, L., Portway, C., Van Luong, H. & Rowley, J.J.L. (2018) A new locality and elevation extension for Megophrys rubrimera (Tapley et al., 2017) in Bat Xat Nature Reserve, Lao Cai Province, northern Vietnam. Herpetology Notes. 11: 865-868.
  • Tapley, B., Cutajar, T.P., Mahony, S., Nguyen, C.T., Dau, V.Q., Luong, A.M., Le, D.T., Nguyen, T.T., Nguyen, T.Q., Portway, C. & Luong, H.V. (2018) Two new and potentially highly threatened Megophrys Horned frogs (Amphibia: Megophryidae) from Indochina’s highest mountains. Zootaxa. 4508 (3): 301-333.

2017

  • Tapley, B., Rowley, J.J.L., Cutajar, T.P., Mahony, S., Nguyen, C.T., Vinh, D.Q., Nguyen, T.T. & Luong, V.H. (2017) The Vietnamese population of Megophrys kuatunensis(Amphibia: Megophryidae) represents a new species of Asian horned frog from Vietnam and southern China. Zootaxa. 4344 (3): 465-492.
  • Rowley, J.J.L., Dau, V.Q., Hoang, H.D., Le, D.T.T., Cutajar, T.P. & Nguyen, T.T. (2017) A new species of Leptolalax (Anura: Megophryidae) from northern Vietnam. Zootaxa. 4243 (3): 544-564.

2016

  • Rowley, J.J.L., Shepherd, C.R., Stuart, B.L., Nguyen, T.Q., Hoang, H.D., Cutajar, T.P., Wogan, G.O.U. & Phimmachak, S. (2016) Estimating the global trade in Southeast Asian Newts. Biological Conservation. 199: 96-100.