Baby “alien” frogs feasting on their moms’ eggs

Click link below for video

You have to see this video from BBC showing tadpoles swarming their mom to feast on her infertile eggs. This rare glimpse is something you wouldn’t be able to see if it weren’t for the captive breeding programs of organizations to save endangered species. It’s all connected to the umbrella program of Amphibian Ark.

Excerpts from the story:

The remarkable footage was recorded at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, in Jersey, which took in 12 of the rescued frogs. Twenty-six others went to Parken Zoo in Sweden, and 12 are now housed in ZSL London Zoo.

“We thought that the eggs would come out and drop to the bottom of the nest and then the tadpoles would start eating them. But the footage shows about 40 tadpoles congregating around the female and eating the eggs as they come out of the female’s body.”

 

Biodiversity is slipping through our fingers, study shows

Six years ago, promises were made by governments from around the world involving the mass extinctions facing so many animal classes, chief among them the amphibian class. The governments vowed to halt the decline in biodiversity by 2o1o. Well, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) just issued a report that says, in essence, “let’s not kid ourselves, when next year comes around, it’s going to be bleak.”

IUCN, which puts out the Red List of most endangered species, has produced a 150-page report that details the loss of biodiversity earth has experienced over the last 5 years. “Biodiversity continues to decline and next year no one will dispute that,” said the report’s senior editor. “It’s happening everywhere.”

Here’s a link to story I just read about this.  (Click HERE.)

An excerpt from the IUCN Web site:

The report shows nearly one third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals are threatened with extinction. For some plant groups, such as conifers and cycads, the situation is even more serious, with 28 percent and 52 percent threatened respectively. For all these groups, habitat destruction, through agriculture, logging and development, is the main threat and occurs worldwide.

In the case of amphibians, the fungal disease chytridiomycosis is seriously affecting an increasing number of species, complicating conservation efforts. For birds, the highest number of threatened species is found in Brazil and Indonesia, but the highest proportion of threatened or extinct birds is found on oceanic islands. Invasive species and hunting are the main threats. For mammals, unsustainable hunting is the greatest threat after habitat loss. This is having a major impact in Asia, where deforestation is also occurring at a very rapid rate.

 

Frogs vanishing in Europe

Frogs are disappearing at an alarming rate in Europe: “Fifty-nine percent of all European amphibians and 42 percent of reptiles are declining and face even greater risk than European mammals and birds, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said.” CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY.

 

Lake Titicaca Frog

Veronica from Bolivia just told me about a frog I hadn’t heard of before — Telmatobius culeus, or the Lake Titicaca frog.  This species has to deal with very thin oxygen high in the Andes, so mother nature has given it special characteristics. The following is excerpted from Livingunderworld.org. Note that the species is considered vulnerable and yet people are reportedly eating them.  Full article HERE.

Telmatobius culeus is referred to as the Lake Titicaca Frog, and is only found in Lake Titicaca. Because of the lower oxygen content in and around the lake, T. culeus must have an efficient method of obtaining the necessary amount of oxygen for survival. To do this, T. culeus respires mainly by means of cutaneous respiration (breathing through the skin), is exclusively aquatic, and possesses large folds of skin all over the body that make it appear flabby and prehistoric. The extra folds of skin increase the amount of oxygen absorbed through the skin because they increase the surface area to volume ratio; a characteristic that is also observed in other permanently aquatic amphibians. These frogs also do “push-ups” that create small disturbances in the water, which increases oxygen flow. The unique blood of T. culeus also aids oxygen absorption. The blood has the smallest erythrocytes (red blood cells) of all the amphibians, and the highest amount of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin are molecules in the blood that bind to oxygen, so the more hemoglobin an animal has, the more oxygen it can carry in the blood at one time. Because of their aquatic nature, these frogs have evolved reduced lungs, and rely almost entirely on cutaneous respiration.

Although classed as “vulnerable” with C.I.T.E.S., T. culeus are eaten in restaurants in Bolivia and Peru, and are a popular tourist dish. Recently, they have been collected for use in what the natives call frog juice, or Peruvian viagra. The frogs are literally put in a blender, and consumed.

 

Frog killing fungus chytrid found in the Philippines

Kevin Zippel from Amphibian Ark just emailed that the chytrid (Bd) fungus that chokes the breath from 80% of the world’s amphibian species it touches has landed in the Philippines. As you will read in THIS STORY, it’s been present for a least two years there. Five indigenous species are affected so far: the Luzon striped frog (Rana similis) has “practically disappeared from the lowland forests of Mount Labo on the southeast tip of the main Philippine island of Luzon”; the Luzon stream frog (Rana luzonensis); two species of the Luzon fanged frog (Limnonectes woodworth and Limnonectes macrocephalus); and the Puddle frog (Occidozyga laevis).

 

Wood frogs of Ohio: the comeback attempt

A Sunday salute to the Ohio State scientists trying to bring the wood frog back to Franklin County, Ohio. This story from the Columbus Dispatch is very interesting.

 

Frogs focus of Earth Week message from Jackson Hole Wildlife Festival

Got this email from the folks at Jackson Hole Film Festival. Good to see frogs are the focus for their Earth Week community event:

Happy EarthWeek.Friday evening we will host another wonderful free community event, at the Center for the Arts, featuring award-winning filmmaker Allison Argo’s latest film, FROGS: The Thin Green Line. This evocative film chronicles the current global amphibian crisis, described as the largest extinction since the age of dinosaurs.

We are not immune here in Jackson Hole–after the film, you will hear about the creatures in our area, and the research underway with biologists Deb Patla and Peter Murphy. We will be distributing identification cards widely throughout the Valley, so you (and anyone you know–take a few to give away) can become a citizen-scientist in the coming months. Who knows, with all of us keeping an eye out, maybe someone will spot the Northern Leopard Frog (last seen in 1995)! Deb Patla has agreed to be the “point of contact” and will confirm sightings and forward information to the appropriate agencies as well as the NatureMapping project.

This project was funded by 1% for the Tetons–please support the businesses that even in the worst financial times, have committed to putting their dollars into tangible programs that directly benefit the creatures and landscape around us!

Come early–as part of the Center’s weeklong Open House, Jackson Hole Music Experience’s Friday Live will feature the Miller Sisters in the Center Lobby starting at 5:00. There will be chili as well as beverages available, so you won’t have to leave if you get hungry.

6:30–Peter Murphy will demonstrate amphibian radio tracking and discuss telemetry research

7:00–FROGS: The Thin Green Line, introduced by Director Allison Argo

8:00–Discussion and Q&A with biologists and filmmaker

 

Is this the wrong time for ‘tipping point’ language regarding the planet?

Thank goodness for the scientists who clang the bell — who leverage the drama to wake us up to what’s happening to the planet. Without them, the only endangered species we’d know about would be banks.

Most scientists, from what I can tell, are a reserved group of people — at least when talking about their area of study to regular people like me. They have hypotheses that predict a very different future for our planet. But they are usually very cautious about becoming a crusader for their prediction unless they are 100% certain that they will be proved right.

That doesn’t describe all of them, of course; some scientists clang the bell to get us to pay attention, hopefully convincing us to change our behaviors.

Enough scientists have written and talked about the crisis facing amphibians that they prompted me to create this blog.Still, I look at the traffic that this blog attracts, and it’s certainly not creating a groundswell. Frogmatters gets about 5,000 views a month, holding steady at that marker for the past few months.

I’ve compared the looming mass extinction of amphibians to a plague and to an AIDS virus. I’ve repeated the metaphor that frogs are the canaries in the coal mine at least 20 times.  I’ve written about the chytrid fungus jumping the Panama Canal, and wiping out the chicken frog population of Montserrat.

I’ve tried to highlight the drama of this race to the froggy bottom because if more people are drawn to drama (and we are), then more people will become aware, and then more people will either write checks or call their governments to demand a rescue.

Then I read this quote in The New York Times: “I think a lot of this threashold and tipping point talk is dangerous. If we say we passed thresholds and tipping points today, this will be an excuse for inaction tomorrow.” That’s what Stanford University earth scientist Kenneth Caldeira said in a scholarly debate about using the phrase, “the tipping point,” to describe our climate being on a precipice. Full store HERE.

Using drama as a device to save the planet, and the animals that reside on it, is a double edged sword. What happens if you convince people to listen to your scariest, fact-based prediction — and they don’t respond? What’s left in your bag of tricks then ?

It’s  a very scary thought, but not as scary as how the story will end if we don’t keep trying.

Keep trying.

 

Frogs get star treatment in National Geographic

What Jennifer Holland has reported in National Geographic is one of the best summaries of the amphibian crisis I have read. The photos are beautiful, the anecdotes fresh and unforgettable. You need to read it. Click HERE.

 

Amphibians as classroom pets need updated caretaking approach

Kevin Zippel, program officer for Amphibian Ark, shared with me a recent paper he helped author with other frog-erati of the herpetology world, all of them associated with the Herpetologists Education Committee of the
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR). I know my daughters, when in elementary school, were thrilled when the classroom would adopt a snake or a guinea pig. What great lessons occur when a teacher instructs children how to care for an animal, and when children take turns providing that care. Now a movement is under foot to involve classrooms in the rescue and care of amphibians. A noble idea, but one fraught with danger if the amphibian were to catch a disease from a reused aquarium, and then is released back into the wild, introducing a dangerous new pathogen to a woodland area or pond.

Zippel and company overview the situation, and provide practical steps that teachers should take, in the paper you can access by clicking here.

I found it interesting that the authors go out of their way to not condemn the idea of bring amphibians into the classroom. Here’s an excerpt I particularly liked:

It was of primary importance to us not to simply squelch this classroom exercise for
reasons of risk avoidance. To us, this exercise is a great example of the spirit of
encouraging a collective public conscience of “bioliteracy” outlined so eloquently by
Ehrlich and Pringle (2008:11584):

“The earlier in the developmental process comes exposure to
nature, the better the odds of inspiring devotion to biodiversity
and its conservation. It is a rare conservationist who did not
encounter nature as a child. Every one of us can go to
elementary schools to show pictures of animals and plants and
tell funny stories about ecology. The teachers will be happy to
have us. More ambitious people might think about how to
finance and institutionalize school field trips to natural areas.”