FrogMAP: Frog Atlas of Southern Africa

This data-set comprises validated species occurrence records of Amphibians on the African continent, although the bulk of the data is for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (former Swaziland). FrogMAP aims to build on the distribution data collected during seven years of fieldwork (1996-2003), plus earlier data compiled from museum records, private collections, the literature, and conservation agencies. Records range from 1905 to present. FrogMAP is a Virtual Museum and citizen science project which aims to determine the distribution and conservation priorities of Amphibians on the African continent. FrogMAP is building the 21st century distribution maps for Africa's Amphibians. FrogMAP also aims to improve public awareness of the value and plight of Amphibians and also provide government agencies with a clear definition of conservation priorities that will help them to plan their activities. FrogMAP is the continuation of the Southern African Frog Atlas Project (SAFAP) and incorporates the full SAFAP database with the current taxonomy. SAFAP data was used for the 2003 red listing of all frog species of the region, the results were published in the book “Atlas and Red Data Book of the Frogs of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland”, published by the Smithsonian Institution, USA. Identification of citizen science records, based on the photos uploaded, is done by a panel of experts in the relevant taxa. The taxonomy is kept up-to-date by the project coordinator, a professional herpetologist. The data available to the public is the subset of shareable records (see Lineage for details), also, records for sensitive taxa are not available to the public. Records are provided at the recorded precision, usually point coordinates. However, historical records were assigned to a 15x15 minute grid (or QDS) based on the locality description when no coordinates were provided. The coverage is good for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, but very sparse for the rest of Africa.