Sathyabhama Das Biju is an Indian amphibian biologist, who teaches at the University of Delhi. With more than a hundred discoveries stemming from his personal work or that in his lab, his is one of the most productive amphibian research laboratories in the world.[1]
Born in Kerala, Biju started his career as a botanist, he became interested in frogs and undertook a second PhD in zoology, from the Amphibian Evolution Lab in Brussels. In a series of investigations, many of them together with Frankie Bossuyt of the Free University of Brussels, Biju has discovered over a hundred of amphibian species,[2][3] many of them from the Western Ghats region. He was the recipient[4] of the 2008 Sabin Award for Amphibian conservation and research.[5] The IUCN citation for the award notes his commitment, "often using his personal earnings to fund his explorations."[6]
Among his discoveries is the entirely new family of caecilians, a kind of legless amphibian. The species Polypedates bijui, discovered in 2011, was named after him.[7] He has also identified 28 out of 36 frog species from India which were suspected extinct after no sightings over the last 50 to 100 years.[8]
Among the conservation projects managed by Biju is a project for the purple frog which has evolved separately for millenia (it's closest relatives are in the Seychelles) but is now facing threats from habitat loss. The discovery of this ancient lineage, which has been called the "coelacanth of frogs", also adds evidence that Madagascar and the Seychelles separated out from the Indian landmass well after Gondwanaland had started breaking up.[1]
Biju's group also discovered the smallest frog in India, the 10mm-long Nyctibatrachus minimus.[9] In September 2011, Biju and a team of student researchers discovered Nyctibatrachus poocha and 11 other species of night frog and rediscovered 3 other species of night frog, thought to be extinct, which had been discovered by C. R. Narayan Rao, Nyctibatrachus kempholeyensis, Nyctibatrachus sanctipalustris and Nyctibatrachus sylvaticus.[10][11][12][13]