Imagine it's pitch black and you're standing in the middle of a wetland, among dense reeds on a Monday night looking for tiny, slimy frogs.
The needle-in-a-haystack search is the unglamorous work of Museums Victoria researchers on a three-year mission to ensure the survival of the tiny amphibians in the state's east.
It's been years since some frog species were last documented in Gippsland and Jane Melville is worried they're at risk of dying out without the intervention of researchers.
"There are huge gaps in what we understand," she said.
"There's been very little conservation, genetic research in Gippsland."
Museum Victoria has now begun a three-year study aimed at tracking down the frogs and collecting tissue samples for genetic research.
The samples — such as a clip of a frog's toe webbing — will be stored in a state-of-the-art storage tank at the Melbourne Museum in Carlton.
Dr Melville's field work has so far focused on threatened species, including the striking green and golden bell frog.
"This species is now federally listed as vulnerable," she said.
"It has been impacted by a disease called chytrid which is a fungus that has affected frogs all over the world."
She said little was known about the genetic health of the species in Gippsland and greater knowledge may identify ways to help support the population.
"A lot of Gippsland is quite remote and difficult to get to and it's just an area that has yet to be fully surveyed in terms of conservation genetics," she said.
Dr Melville said frogs are considered a good indicator of an area's overall environmental health.
"They're in trouble globally," she said.
"It's part of our duty to ensure that these amazing species that have survived so many other extinction events over the last few hundred million years are able to survive."
Once tissue samples are collected from the frogs, Dr Joanna Sumner's job is to make sure they are properly stored at -185 degrees Celsius in the museum's liquid nitrogen cryotank.
She has also been involved in the frog search and said some ponds in Gippsland have probably not been examined since the 1970s.
"It's really important we know what is there in order to conserve it," she said.
"We have a collection of tissues that we can use for research, for ongoing research, at the museum and in fact researchers worldwide can access these collections as well."
