Cover Picture and Issue Information

Cover image: This month’s cover image shows a simple representation of the FrogPhone: a novel device which allows scientists to call up a frog survey site and monitor them in the wild. The FrogPhone is the world’s first solar‐powered remote survey device that relays environmental data to the observer via text messages, whilst conducting real‐time remote acoustic surveys over the phone. In their article, Garrido Sanchis et al. present the device in full detail. The frogphone utilises 3G/4G cellular mobile data coverage and capitalises on the characteristic wideband audio of mobile phones, which acts as a carrier for frog calls. Real time frog calls can be transmitted across the 3G/4G network infrastructure, directly to the user’s phone. This supports clear sound quality and minimal background noise, allowing users to identify the calls of different frog species. The FrogPhone unifies both passive acoustic and active monitoring methods, all in a waterproof casing. The system has a large battery capacity coupled to a powerful solar panel. It also contains digital thermal sensors to automatically collect environmental data such as water and air temperature in real‐time. The FrogPhone uses an open‐source platform which allows any researcher to adapt it to project‐specific needs. The system simulates the main features of a mobile phone device. The FrogPhone accepts incoming calls independently after three seconds. These three seconds allow time to activate the temperature sensors and measure the battery storage levels. All readings then get automatically texted to the caller’s phone. Photo credit: © Marta Yebra