06/11/12

Remarkable Frog Dads of Papua New Guinea

This is an updated repost of a Father’s Day post from 2009.

Most animal dads aren’t too involved with their offspring (human dads, excepted of course). But two species of frogs, Liophryne schlaginhaufeni and Sphenophryne cornuta, in the microhylid frog family are devoted dads, and in fact, carry their their brood of up to 25 froglets piggyback style through the rain forest of Papua New Guinea. The frogs were discovered by evolutionary biologist David Bickford.

While most frogs start their lives as tadpoles, these frogs undergo “direct development.” They bypass the tadpole stage and go straight from larvae to miniature versions of adults while still inside the egg. This is an adaptation that allows the frog to reproduce in regions without bodies of water nearby.

After the mother frog lays the eggs, she hops off while Dad watches over the clutch, warding off predators, and keeping the eggs moist for about a month.

copyright David Bickford

After the froglets hatch from the eggs, they hop on Dad’s back. He carries them by night through the leaf litter in the rain forest. The froglets have a free ride until they grow up a bit and can live independently (hmmm…sounds familiar).

This is an updated repost of a Father’s Day post from 2009.

05/31/12

Learning about Nature in the Concrete Jungle

Recently we received an email from Kelly Rypkema, a New York area naturalist who is the producer and host of the video series Nature in a New York Minute. Kelly has just released an episode about the Amphibian Crossing Project in New Jersey, a volunteer-based effort to conserve amphibians in the Northeast.

In the Amphibian Crossing episode, we learn about the manmade obstacles that frogs, toads, and salamanders face each spring as they attempt to migrate, obstacles that threaten their very survival. Kelly joins a team of biologists and volunteers who are working to save these animals by taking matters into their own hands – literally.

If you’re a city dweller with an interest in nature around you, please take a look at Kelly’s site. For nature-oriented news and events, you can follow her on Twitter and Facebook or subscribe to her blog.

05/21/12

The Map of Life: Where in the World Are Frogs?

A research team involving Yale University and the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a first public demonstration version of its “Map of Life,” an ambitious Web-based project designed to show the distribution of all living plants and animals on the planet.

According to their press release, the demo version allows anyone with an Internet connection to map the known global distribution of almost 25,000 species of terrestrial vertebrate animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and North American freshwater fish.

The researchers compiled information about the animals from different sources: field guides, museum collections, and wildlife checklists from scientists, conservation organizations, and “citizen scientists.” They hope that scientists and informed amateurs will supply new or missing information about the distribution and abundance of particular species.

The Map of Life allows users to see several levels of detail for a given species — at its broadest, the type of environment it lives in, and at its finest, specific locations where the species’ presence has been documented. One function allows users to click a point on the map and generate a list of vertebrate species in the surrounding area. More functions will be added over time, according to the team.

“It is the where and the when of a species,” said Walter Jetz, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale and the project lead. “It puts at your fingertips the geographic diversity of life. Ultimately, the hope is for this literally to include hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species and show how much or indeed how little we know of their whereabouts.”

Eventually they hope that anyone, anywhere will be able to use their mobile devices to instantly pull up animal and plant distributions and even get a realistic assessment on the odds of encountering a particular species of wildlife.

The researchers have created two video demos.

At Frogs Are Green, we think this will be a great project both as a learning tool (you can plug in a species name and get an overview of information about the species and where the species is found), but it will also give scientists a tool to understand the biodiversity of a particular area.

Click, to try out the Map of Life.

05/11/12

Saving Frogs (and a Village) in Ireland

We recently received an e-mail from Laurence Stafford, who lives in a small village called Parteen in County Clare, Ireland. A highway is being proposed that will cut through his village, destroying the habitat of the Irish Common Frog (Rana temporaria).

Photo courtesy www.doeni.gov.uk

Laurence’s e-mail highlights the problem of habitat destruction. What does it matter that frogs are losing their habitat in one small area of Ireland? Unfortunately this type of habitat loss is occurring across the globe: it is one of the reasons for the rapid worldwide amphibian decline. Of course, having a highway cut through a village will have enormous human costs as well.

The story is as follows: there is a joint venture between Limerick County Council and Clare County Council underway to build a highway costing over 352 million euros that will connect Galway to the University of Limerick. The highway will cut through Parteen village.

The Environmental Group of Parteen has warned the emerging preferred route crosses rural farmland, which is home to a protected species, Rana Temporaria. Although this species is fairly plentiful in Ireland, it is protected under an EU directive because of its declining numbers in Europe. The directive aims to protect some 220 habitats and lists approximately 1,000 species, including the frog.

This road will also divide a peaceful and tranquil village in two; the proposed volume of traffic is estimated at 20,000 to 30,000 cars, which calculates at 210,000 a month and 2,520,000 a year passing through a small community.

As reported in the Clare Champion, the group’s concerns are shared by Councillor Pascal Fitzgerald, who is disappointed with the planning of the new road, which he claims will divide settled communities and destroy their living environment: “Even people who have no connections with the area are asking why areas that have been ideal for living in are now to virtually have their heart cut out.”

We hope that the local county councils will rethink this route, both to preserve the frogs’ habitat – so important in this time of declining amphibian populations worldwide – but also to preserve the integrity of the village of Parteen.

Here is more information. Ecoparteen’s Twitter feed is here. Please lend your support!

05/2/12

Chemical Pollution in Your Backyard: Researching the Effects of Endocrine Disruptors in Suburbia

We were so pleased to receive this guest post by Geoffrey Giller, who is a Master’s of Environmental Science candidate, 2013, at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. At Frogs Are Green, we have explored the issue of endocrine disruptors and their possible effects on frogs, as well as on humans. We look forward to learning the results of his research.

Geoffrey Giller environmental sciences Yale school

Geoff Giller readying nets for sampling at a golf course (Photo credit: Susan Bolden)

Frogs are threatened globally by a host of stressors, from habitat loss to climate change to infectious diseases. One threat receiving increased scientific attention is endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). These chemicals interfere with normal hormonal function. In 2002, Dr. Tyrone Hayes published a paper in Nature detailing the feminizing effects of the widely-used pesticide atrazine on male African clawed frogs. Since then, there has been increasing research showing similar effects of other EDCs on frogs and fish. There is also more and more evidence that endocrine disruptors are widely prevalent pollutants in the water bodies of the United States.

As a Master’s student at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, I want to further investigate the presence and effects of these EDCs. My advisor, Dr. David Skelly, recently published a paper showing that green frog hermaphrodites are most prevalent in suburban areas. While most research since Dr. Hayes’ paper has focused on agricultural areas, Dr. Skelly’s work indicated that there may be a significant source of EDCs causing these high rates of hermaphroditism (as demonstrated by the presence of egg cells in the gonads of male green frogs) in suburban areas.

Testicular oocytes (egg cells in male gonads) from Skelly et al. 2010

This topic has implications both for frog conservation, as such sexual deformities likely inhibit frogs’ abilities to reproduce, and for human health, since suburban areas are much more densely populated than agricultural ones. But while the presence of these deformities has been confirmed, their cause has not. Dr. Skelly has hypothesized that the cause may be certain EDCs called synthetic estrogenic compounds; these chemicals are found in medications such as birth control pills as well as in some cosmetic products. The source of these chemicals would likely be septic tanks that leach chemicals into the groundwater; this contaminated groundwater then flows into nearby ponds, streams, and wetlands where frogs breed and live.

I am working with my fellow Master’s student, Max Lambert, to identify exactly what chemicals are present in the groundwater and pond water in suburban areas and what effect these chemicals are having on frogs. In collaboration with scientists at USGS, we will be installing sampling devices at 9 suburban sites, as well as three agricultural and three forested sites as comparisons. We will sample the groundwater and the pond water for a large range of chemicals including medications, synthetic estrogens, pesticides, and a host of other man-made compounds. This study will provide a list of the chemicals that may be responsible for the deformities in the frogs that we are observing.

Max Lambert with a peeper (Photo credit: Hannah Erin Bement)

In addition to the water testing, we will be surveying three types of frogs—American toads, gray tree frogs, and pickerel frogs—for similar sexual deformities. By combining the data from our water testing with the rates of deformities in frogs at these same ponds, we will be able to say which chemicals are likely causing deformities, and which are not. This information will be crucial for the future regulation of these chemicals.

The main stumbling block of this project is the cost. EDCs can have significant biological effects when present at very low concentrations; however, doing water testing for such low concentrations of chemicals requires highly specialized equipment. While some of our costs are covered by our collaboration with USGS, we still need to raise some funds. For more information on our project, and for a chance to help us out with this research, please go here: http://www.petridish.org/projects/estrogens-in-your-backyard-the-chemical-ecology-of-suburbia. This website allows researchers to raise necessary resources through “crowdfunding,” or multiple small donations from a large number of people. We are close to our target funding amount, but could use a little more help. Take a look at our page (as well as the various rewards for different donation amounts), and we would be incredibly grateful for your support!

04/28/12

Save the Frogs Day 2012!

Today is Save the Frogs Day, the world’s largest day of amphibian education and conservation action, organized by Save the Frogs, an organization dedicated to protecting the world’s amphibian species, founded by ecologist Dr. Kerry Kriger.

Funds raised in the many Save the Frogs Day events go in part for grants to help amphibian projects in developing countries that have high rates of deforestation, including Nepal, Madagascar, and Liberia. Without funds from Save the Frogs, these projects might not have been possible.

At Frogs Are Green, we would like to encourage you to check out the events that are going on today around the world, and also to urge you to do something, even something small, to help out. Educating just one person about the plight of amphibians will help.

One-third of all amphibians are at risk of extinction and we should be concerned. After all, we humans also share this planet with amphibians, a planet that seems to have become too unhealthy for an entire group of animals. By saving frogs, we also save ourselves.

Please see the Save the Frogs site for lots of suggestions for getting involved on Save the Frogs Day—and everyday.

Here’s a cool t-shirt you can buy over at Save the Frogs: