Whenever Keerthi Krutha’s mother, T V Champakalatha, asked her to come home for festivals, she often received an answer that said everything about her daughter’s love for the wilderness.
“Amma, I am already home. The forest is my home,” Keerthi would tell her.
For the 36-year-old Chennai-born wildlife researcher, the forests of the Western Ghats had become part of everyday life. After sunset, when frogs began calling from streams and insects filled the air with their sounds, she would set out with a torch, sampling kits and notebooks.
Her task was to find the frogs, collect samples from their skin, record what she saw and release them unharmed.
Some nights meant crossing slippery rocks and swollen streams. Others brought leeches, unpredictable rain and hours of walking. Yet these were the places Keerthi had always wanted to be.
Over several years, working largely on her own, she surveyed 49 protected areas and 19 other landscapes, documenting more than 3,000 amphibians.
She was searching for answers to a worrying question: was a fungus that had devastated frogs in other parts of the world spreading through India’s forests too?
Her research would help scientists understand where the fungus had reached in the Western Ghats and how to keep checking for it.
“If frogs are dying, then it means there is a problem,” Keerthi told The Hindu in 2015. “Frogs are ecological indicators.”
Speaking to The Better India, she traces this work back to a childhood spent learning about snakes, crocodiles and forests.
It began with a childhood love for wildlife
Growing up in Chennai, Keerthi looked forward to nature documentaries and filled her shelves with wildlife books. Family trips often took her to forests rather than popular tourist attractions. The more she learnt, the more time she wanted outdoors.
“It wasn’t something that came suddenly,” her mother tells The Better India. “Nature was always where she felt happiest.”
Growing up in Chennai, Keerthi looked forward to nature documentaries and filled her shelves with wildlife books.
In 2004, as a school student, Keerthi was selected as a Sanctuary Asia Tiger Ambassador through the Kids for Tigers programme. Visits to protected forests introduced her to people who had made wildlife conservation their life’s work. Conservation began to feel like a possible future.
She also volunteered at the Madras Crocodile Bank, helping clean crocodile enclosures after the 2004 tsunami.
While studying for a BTech in Biotechnology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore, she joined local snake rescues, participated in wildlife estimation exercises and volunteered with conservation organisations.
“Wildlife became the direction she wanted her life to take,” her mother says.
By the time Keerthi graduated in 2012, she knew she wanted to work in conservation. An opportunity soon took her back into the forests, this time to study frogs.
Looking for a fungus in frogs
After graduating, she joined a project run by the Wildlife Information Liaison Development (WILD) Society and Zoo Outreach Organisation, affiliated with the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune.
The team was investigating a fungus that infects frogs and other amphibians in the Western Ghats. It causes a disease called chytridiomycosis. Scientists call the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or simply chytrid fungus.
The fungus attacks their skin, which frogs rely on to absorb water and breathe. In some frogs, a serious infection can be fatal.
“It has resulted in the extinction of nearly 200 species of frogs globally and threatens almost 40 percent of amphibian species,” Keerthi tells The Better India.
The Western Ghats, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, are home to more than 200 frog species, many found nowhere else. Although India had not seen the mass frog deaths reported elsewhere, scientists had already detected the fungus in several species.
“The incidence of this disease was recorded for the first time here in 2011,” Keerthi explains. “That made long-term monitoring especially important.”
Researchers needed to find out which forests harboured the fungus and whether it appeared in new places over time. That meant searching for frogs in the wild, without hurting them. Keerthi was ready to do the work.
What it takes to survey thousands of frogs after dark
Frogs are especially active at night. Following their calls, Keerthi searched rainforests, evergreen forests, shola grasslands and streams, often working until late in the nights.
Even finding these tiny animals could take hours.
She carefully took a skin swab from each frog, recorded its details and released it. The swabs could then be tested for fungus without harming the animals.
On one of her expeditions, her mother joined her and saw how difficult and demanding her work really was.
Between surveys, she stayed in forest camps. Leeches, slippery paths, rising streams and unpredictable weather became familiar parts of the work.
On one visit, her mother joined her and saw what these nights demanded.
“I realised how difficult and demanding the work really was,” she tells The Better India. “But I also knew she was exactly where she wanted to be.”
For Keerthi, each sample brought scientists closer to understanding the possible danger facing the animals she had spent so long searching for.
How tiny skin samples helped track a hidden threat
Collecting frogs’ skin samples was only half the job. Scientists also needed a reliable way to repeat these checks in different forests and compare what they found.
Keerthi helped develop clear steps for finding frogs, taking samples and recording results, so other researchers could follow the same process in the years ahead.
Tests at IISER Pune found that the fungus belonged to a type already known to occur widely in Asia. The findings were published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, adding to what researchers knew about its presence in the Western Ghats.
As the work expanded, Keerthi independently secured two grants from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund. This allowed the surveys to reach more places and the team to continue documenting frogs.
The samples and methods gave future researchers a starting point for checking whether the disease was spreading or changing over time.
An unexpected discovery in the woods
The forests held another surprise. While studying a disease already known to scientists, Keerthi and her colleagues helped identify a frog species that had never been formally described.
In 2017, they described Nyctibatrachus mewasinghi, or Mewa Singh’s night frog, found only in Kerala’s Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary.
Discoveries like this help scientists understand where a species lives and which habitats may need protection. But finding a species is only the first step. Understanding the threats it faces is equally important, and frogs themselves can offer valuable clues.
Tigers and elephants often draw the spotlight in wildlife conservation. Frogs are easier to overlook, but they can tell us a great deal about the health of our forests.
Their skin absorbs water and helps them breathe, making them especially sensitive to pollution, habitat damage and disease. When frog populations begin to decline, it can be an early warning that something is wrong in their surroundings, potentially affecting other wildlife too.
“If frogs are dying, then it means there is a problem,” Keerthi says.
This is what makes her research so important. By identifying where the fungus has been found, Keerthi is helping scientists keep watch for a threat that could affect frogs across the Western Ghats, including species found nowhere else on Earth.
For Keerthi, the forest has always been home
The child who explored tiger reserves, cleaned crocodile enclosures after the tsunami and rescued snakes grew into a researcher documenting frogs and helping scientists understand a disease threatening them worldwide.
Her surveys, scientific work and role in discovering a new species have added to what we know about the Western Ghats and the wildlife that depends on them.
Her mother has watched that commitment carry Keerthi through long field trips and festivals away from home.
“She has always chosen the forest,” she says.
All Pictures: Keerthikrutha Seetharaman
