A study by former C∙I∙B student, Anneke Lincoln Schoeman, showed that genetic data from parasites can act as tags, revealing the translocation of their hosts.
The most recent assessment suggests that the Cape platanna is Endangered, but that instead the decline being fuelled by habitat loss, it is now the threat from hybridisation, competition and predation by the African clawed frog.
Genetic analyses of a population of invasive French platannas suggest they came from all over South Africa.
When humans change the habitat of a certain species, another species can invade the habitat of that species. This was the case when the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), which thrives in artificial water-bodies, was able to invade the habitat of the Cape platanna (Xenopus gilli) as a result of new permanent artificial water-bodies constructed in their habitat.
