10/30/11

What's Really Scary: A World without Bats

It’s almost Halloween and what animal is more associated with this spooky holiday than any other? The answer isn’t frogs, it’s bats.

Unlike frogs, however, which seem to have lots of human friends and supporters, bats have few. Most people find them pretty creepy. They’re associated with vampires and other scary things.

I learned about bats many years ago when I lived in Ohio. When I visited friends’ homes out in the country, bats would often emerge at sunset, and they were quite beautiful, flying up into the sky. I also watched a swarm of bats emerge at sunset from Carlsbad Canyons in New Mexico (see video below), a daily natural spectacle.

Did these bats make a beeline for the humans so they could bite them and suck their blood? No. They ignored us humans completely, focused instead on finding some tastier prey—mosquitoes and other insects.

Unfortunately bats seem to be sharing the fate of frogs and bees—they are vanishing because of a mysterious fungal disease. As Sandra Steingrabber writes in Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis: “The possible contribution of pesticides and climate change to the bats’ malady is a topic of discussion among field biologists—as is the synchronous vanishings of fungal-afflicted honeybees and frogs.”

In 2006 scientists found hundreds of dead bats inside several caves across the country—all had white muzzles, the result of a fungus. Bats with this white-nose disease were subsequently found in 115 different caves from Tennessee to Quebec. The fungus grows on the exposed skin of a hibernating bat and causes the bat to wake up, behave strangely, and burn up its fat reserves, thus starving to death.

The disease has claimed the lives of a million bats across 19 states. More than half of the bat species in the United States are in severe decline or are listed as endangered.

A World Without Bats

So what would the world be like without bats?

Imagine being swarmed by insects and bitten by mosquitoes from head to toe. Imagine pests wiping out agriculture across the country, causing produce prices to go up.

If the decline of bats continues these scary scenarios could be our reality.

We need these spooky, fast-flying mammals that can eat 1,200 insects in an hour, protecting us from the West Nile Virus and other deadly diseases.*

So this Halloween, amid all the Batman and vampire costumes, don’t forget that bats are pretty amazing—and important—animals that need our help. One way you can help bats is to build a bat house. Here’s some information from the National Wildlife Federation.

Here’s a video of Mexican free-tail bats emerging at sunset at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, to eat their evening meal of millions of insects:

For more information:

From the Incredible Disappearing Bat, Nature Conservancy site.

10/23/11

Contest Update: Frogs Are Green Kids Art Contest 2011

We’ve been so excited to receive entries for our kids’ art contest from children all over the United States, as well as entries from Canada, Scotland, Ireland, India, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Hong Kong.

You can view the entries by either selecting the “galleries” link in the top navigation or by holding the cursor over the gallery thumbnails in the right sidebar, where you will see the Kids’ Art Contest 2011 among others. Once you click on the first piece of art, just click the forward and back arrows and you can view each piece of art in a slide show.

We’re so impressed by the variety of the art: from crayon, colored pencil, watercolors, and paintings to 3D sculptures, collage, and mixed media.

Honorable mention from our 2010 contest, by Li Hing Fung, Hong Kong

If you haven’t entered your artwork and would still like to, please click on the contest rules at the top of the blog. The age groups are 3-6, 7-9, and 10-12 and there will be a winner in each group. The winners will be featured in a post.

Also, if you’ve entered the contest, please don’t forget to send your address so we can send you a Frogs Are Green wristband after the contest is over. These wristbands are really nice—they’re smaller than the usual wristbands (youth size) so are good for kids. Susan and I wear our wristbands 24/7!*

Anyway, we’re so happy to see so many creative kids out there creating and expressing themselves for our favorite animal!

*Note: Our use of your address is a one-time thing. It won’t be saved or used for any purpose other than for sending the wristbands.

10/9/11

Winter is Coming: How Do Frogs Avoid Freezing?

Yesterday while shopping at the mall, I noticed that some stores had already begun putting up holiday decorations. The racks were filled with sweaters and down coats. We humans (at least in the northeast U.S.) are preparing for winter. But what about our amphibian friends? How do they prepare for winter? After all, frogs would seem vulnerable to extreme cold with their thin skins and their need to constantly stay moist.

Actually, we don’t need to worry about the frogs. They are well-equipped to deal with the cold weather, even with Arctic temperatures.

Frogs are ectothermic, which means that they rely on their environment to regulate their body temperature. Birds and mammals, including humans, are endotherms. We generate heat chemically and internally by breaking down food. The bodies of ectotherms reflect the air, ground, and water temperatures around them. One advantage that ectotherms have over mammals is that they can survive for long periods without eating.

In the fall, frogs first need to find a place to make their winter home, a living space called a hibernaculum that will protect them from weather extremes and from predators. The frog then “sleeps” away the winter by slowing down its metabolism. When spring arrives, it wakes up and leaves the hibernaculum, immediately ready for mating and eating.

Aquatic frogs and toads such as the leopard frog and American bullfrog usually hibernate underwater in streambeds or on pond bottoms. Because aquatic frogs need oxygen, they lie just above the mud, or only partially buried in the mud, so they are near the oxygen-rich water. They may even occasionally slowly swim around.

Terrestrial frogs and toads typically hibernate on land. Those frogs and toads that are good diggers like the American toads burrow deep into the soil, safely below the frost line. Other frogs, such as the wood frog and the spring peeper, aren’t good diggers and so must scout out their winter homes in deep cracks and crevices in logs or rocks, or they might dig down into the leaf litter.

These frozen peepers and wood frogs might look dead; their hearts have actually stopped beating. But the partially frozen frogs aren’t dead. Instead, they have a kind of natural anti-freeze in their bodies. Ice crystals form in their organs and body cavity, but a high concentration of glucose in the frogs’ vital organs prevents freezing. When spring approaches and its hibernaculum warms up above freezing, a frog’s frozen body will thaw, and it will come back to life.

As you go about preparing for winter, think of the frogs with their amazing adaptations for survival, safe in their winter homes, waiting for spring.

Here’s a video from YouTube about the hibernation of a wood frog. It’s pretty amazing—take a look!

This is a partial repost of an earlier post from December 2010. Most of the information from the post came from an article in Scientific American, How Do Frogs Survive the Winter? by Rick Emmer.

09/26/11

Is it a Frog or a Cat?: Newly Discovered Amphibians in India

At Frogs Are Green, we always enjoy the stories of newly discovered frog species and the re-discovery of frog species thought to be extinct. These stories counterbalance some of the less optimistic news stories about amphibians these days.

Recently in India, twelve new frog species were discovered, and three species were rediscovered. Scientists with Global Wildlife Conservation, led by biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju of the University of Delhi, spent years searching at night in the forests of Western Ghats, in Kerala, listening for frog calls.

Wayand Night Frog. Photo by Sathyabhama Das Biju/Global Wildlife Conservation from NationalGeographic.com

Some of the newly discovered frogs include:

The Meowing Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus poocha): Its croak sounds more like a cat than a frog.

The Jog’s Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus jog): Both males and females look after the eggs.

The Wayanad Night Frog (Nyctibatrachus grandis): It grows to about the size of a baseball and leaps from rock to rock.

The Coorg night frog (Nyctibatrachus sanctipalustris): This frog was described 91 years ago and was thought to be extinct, but has now been rediscovered.

The discoveries were published in the latest issue of international taxonomy journal Zootaxa, bringing the known number of frog species in India to 336.

Many of the newly found frogs in India are rare and are living in just a single area and so are especially vulnerable and will need rigorous protection. But most conservation in India is focused on the two most charismatic animals – the elephant and the tiger. According to Dr. Biju, there is little interest in amphibians, not much funding, and frog research is not easy.

In some parts of India, however, frogs are revered. They symbolize rain and prosperity and the end of a drought. We hope that these amazing amphibians are similarly revered and get the protection they need.

To see a slideshow of the frogs on Huffington Post, click here.

Thank you to Frogs Are Green friend Dana Breaux Kennedy for pointing us to the article about the newly discovered frogs in India.

09/16/11

Chytrid Fungus: Hope for Fighting Deadly Amphibian Disease

Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered a freshwater organism that might help in fighting the chytrid fungus, which is a principal cause for the worldwide amphibian decline. A freshwater species of zooplankton, called Daphnia magna, could provide a tool for biological control of the deadly fungus whose impact, one researcher has called “the most spectacular loss of vertebrate biodiversity due to disease in recorded history.”

Daphnia magna is a variety of water fleas of the genus Daphnia, some species of which are commonly used as food for aquarium fish. It was known that the zooplankton could devour some types of fungi. Oregon researchers wanted to find out whether Daphnia magna could also consume the chytrid fungus that has been devastating amphibian populations worldwide, including Colorado’s endangered boreal toad.

Through extensive research, scientists confirmed that Daphnia magna could consume the free swimming spores of the fungal pathogen. According to lead researcher Julia Buck, an OSU doctoral student in zoology, in an Oregon State University press release:

We feel that biological control offers the best chance to control this fungal disease, and now we have a good candidate for that. Efforts to eradicate this disease have been unsuccessful, but so far no one has attempted biocontrol of the chytrid fungus. That may be the way to go.

Now scientists need to conduct field studies to confirm the zooplankton’s effectiveness in a natural setting. The OSU scientists have found that Daphnia inhabits amphibian breeding sites where chytrid transmission occurs and may be able to stem the unprecedented population declines and extinctions.

For background on the chytrid fungus, please see the video below that we found on the Save the Frogs site, produced by the National Science Foundation:

The Oregon State University research was reported in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, and was supported by the National Science Foundation. Click here for the full report.

09/10/11

How Do Hurricanes Affect Wildlife?

After Hurricane Irene, Susan posed the question to me: what happens to wildlife during a hurricane? I decided to try and find out the answer to this. Because Irene affected such an enormous area—from North Carolina to New England—it’s difficult to generalize. I began with the National Wildlife Federation’s Seven Things to Know about How Hurricanes Affect Wildlife, which I’ve summarized below. Please see the NWF site for more information.

Wind Dislocation

The powerful winds in a hurricane can blow birds off course and push them away from their home habitat. While songbird and woodland birds can cling to branches, and woodpeckers and other cavity nesters ride out the storm inside trees, sea birds and waterfowl are exposed to the high winds.

Other tree dwelling animals are also effected. During Irene, many baby squirrels were orphaned after being blown out of their nests in trees.

Courtesy www.humanesociety.org

Tree Loss

Loss of coastal forests and trees can be devastating to wildlife dependent on the trees for food and habitat. High winds will often strip trees and bushes of food for wildlife: fruits, seeds, and berries.

Dune and Beach Loss

Storm surges, wave action, and winds can cause beach and dune erosion, which has severe effects on species, especially those that live in ecological niches in the sandy areas and dunes of coastal barrier islands. Sea turtle nests, for example, can be washed out, or a water surge, called a “wash over” that can submerge these nests. Tern and plover nesting areas may also be affected. In some cases, the storm can cause an entire beach area to disappear.

Saltwater Intrusion

The sustained and powerful winds of a hurricane may cause salty ocean water to pile up and surge onshore. These storm surges can be huge. Hurricane Irene’s surges brought water levels that were as much as 8 feet above normal high tide. In addition to the physical damage this causes, the salt contained in sea water dramatically shifts the delicate balance of freshwater and brackish wetland areas. Creatures and vegetation that are less salt-tolerant may be harmed and many may not survive this influx of sea water.

Freshwater Flooding

Heavy rains generated by hurricanes dump water in coastal area river basins (called watersheds) and this, in turn, can send vast amounts of fresh water surging downstream into coastal bays and estuaries. This upsets the delicate and finely tuned freshwater/salt water balance that can be so vital for the health of these ecosystems.

Turbidity

Heavy rainfall in upstream areas also washes soil, sediment, and pollutants into coastal and marine environments. Similarly, sediment can wash over coral reefs, blocking needed sunlight.

Marine and Aquatic Species

Hurricane Irene generated massive waves and violent action on the surface. When hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana the government estimated that more than 9 million fish were killed offshore. Similarly an assessment of the effect of that same storm on the Everglades Basin in Florida showed that 182 million fish were killed.

Close to Home

Where I live in Hoboken, New Jersey, many of the city’s residents (including my family) were subject to a mandatory evacuation because of the danger of flooding; in worst case scenarios, possible storm surges were predicted to cause water to rise to the second story of the city’s apartment buildings. While the flooding wasn’t as severe as predicted, we did notice that the water on the sidewalks, in our basements, and backyards smelled toxic. Considering that this water flows into storm drains and eventually into waterways is disturbing. This “witch’s brew,” as it was called in various news reports, consisted of raw and partially treated sewage, chemicals from industrial facilities, bacteria, oil, and gasoline.

This commentary by Jeff Tittel in the New Jersey Newsroom.com about the possibility of this toxic brew being released during hurricanes from New Jersey’s many superfund sites was disturbing:

The New Jersey DEP only has one inspector reviewing institutional controls and caps and ensuring flooding and other impacts do not impact the controls. We have 118 superfund sites, 16,000 contaminated sites, and 7,000 sites that have been remediated, some of which are very complex. There are about 500 toxic sites near our rivers and about 3,500 are located near groundwater sources and 500 near major water supply wells. Flooding and polluted stormwater could result in toxins from these sites entering our waterways.

The other day I heard about a woman in Hoboken who sloshed around in the water in flip flops the day after the hurricane and who now has a serious infection. I could smell this toxic brew right in my own flooded basement and backyard. This can’t be good for wildlife (or for people either).

Hoboken after Hurricane Irene. Photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

How did Hurricane Irene affect the environment and the wildlife in your area?