06/14/10

Northern Leopard Frog: Hidden in the Grass

Over Memorial Day, my family and I explored Frotenac Provincial Park in southeastern Ontario, Canada. We called this park Frog Heaven because it was full of swamps, marshes, and frogs ponds.

I saw a few bullfrogs, but my son spotted what I’m pretty sure is a Northern Leopard Frog (any herpetologists out there who would like to confirm this for me?) Below are a few photos: the leopard frog perfectly camouflaged and the same frog close up. The frog did not jump away when it sensed us nearby, but sat frozen in place—the better to hide from a predator. But that gave us the opportunity to take lots of pictures of it.

Frotenac Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

Northern Leopard Frog, camouflaged. Photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

Northern Leopard Frog close up. Photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

Leopard frogs, sometimes called meadow frogs, are found from southern Canada to northern Mexico. They are usually green or brown with dark spots. Northern Leopard frogs live in permanent ponds, swamps, marshes, and slow-moving streams throughout forest. Because they are especially sensitive to chemical pollutants, their numbers have declined since the 1970s due to acid rain and deforestation. You can read more about them and hear their distinctive snore-like call on eNature.

Please keep your eye out for frogs or other amphibians in your travels this summer. You might want to take pictures of them and submit them to the second annual Frogs Are Green photo contest (details to come later this week)!

06/6/10

Toad Detour

Our last post was about Greek frogs on the move, but close to home, American toads are also on the move and are being helped by an organization called Toad Detour, as reported on Philly.com.

In early March, volunteers with Toad Detour helped adult toads cross a road in Upper Roxborough, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, to get to their breeding ponds. Now the Toad Detour volunteers are helping tiny toadlets make their way back across the road to reach their home in nearby woods. From May 23 to June 30, the Streets Department has provided a permit for the group to detour cars when the toads are crossing.

The toadlets have been traveling by the thousands, especially on damp and rainy nights, and will continue to do so for the next several weeks, according to Lisa Levinson, coordinator of Toad Detour. The toads temporarily halt their migration during dry weather. But nothing else will stop them. A 15-foot rock wall stands in their path, but they hop up and over it.

“One car will kill a thousand of them,” Levinson said. “It’s hard to see them. They look like insects, spiders, or more like flies.”

Volunteers are badly needed to protect the toadlets, set up road barricades, and distribute brochures about the migration, Levinson said. If you live in the Philly area and would like to become a Toad Patroller, visit the Toad Detour website.

06/1/10

Why Did a Million Frogs Cross the Road (and other frog news)

We’ve been preoccupied with the Gulf Oil Spill the last few weeks and are behind on the latest amphibians news. Here are a couple of stories to bring you up to date. Thanks, Gail and Rafi, for letting us know about these frog stories!

Greek Frogs on the Move

This past week a million frogs swarmed across the Egnatia highway near the town of Langadas, some 12 miles (20 kilometers) east of Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.

According to Giorgos Thanoglou, chief of traffic police in Thessaloniki, a section of the road was closed after three cars skidded off the road when the drivers tried to dodge the frogs.

Why did millions of frogs cross the road? They were probably hungry. They have been migrating from a nearby lake to look for food.

Pinocchio the Frog

A Pinocchio-nosed frog is among the newly identified species discovered during an recent expedition to Indonesia’s remote Foja Mountains.

The long-nosed frog, a tree frog, was discovered by accident. It hopped into the researchers’ campsite where herpetologist Paul Olivertree found it sitting on a bag of rice. The frog has a long spike on its nose that points upward when the male is calling but deflates and points downward when he is less active.

In addition to the pinocchio-nosed frog and other unique species such as a gargoyle-faced gecko and the world’s smallest wallaby, the researchers also found innumerable bird species, including a giant northern cassowary (a large flightless bird with a helmet that resembles a dinosaur), birds of paradise, parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, and hornbills.

This area of the rainforest in the Foja Mountains is so isolated that even forest-dwelling people haven’t ventured there. “As a result, wildlife was abundant and unwary,” says Bruce Beehler, a senior research scientist at Conservation International, in a dispatch from the field, as reported in a Christian Science Monitor article. “The dawn chorus of birdsong and the rattle of katydids were deafening. There is nothing like it!”

Researchers with Conservation International and the National Geographic Society hope the documentation of such unique, endemic biodiversity will encourage the government of Indonesia to bolster long-term protection of the area, which is classified as a national wildlife sanctuary.

You can see the Pinocchio-frog and the other newly discovered species in this slide show and on the National Geographic site.

We find the stories of newly discovered Lost Worlds fascinating and hope they inspire people to protect these last vestiges of pristine rainforest, areas of awe-inspiring biodiversity.

Have we missed any other interesting amphibian stories? If so, please don’t hesitate to send them on to us!

05/25/10

Gulf Coast Wetlands Threatened by Oil Spill

We’ve abandoned our amphibian friends for a couple of weeks to write about the Gulf Coast Oil spill, and while I’d hoped to get back to them this week, the latest news about the oil washing up and covering wetlands seemed too important for us to ignore. And it is an issue that relates to amphibians. While few amphibians live in salt-water wetlands, fresh-water wetlands are vitally important to them.

Wetlands are some of the most environmentally productive ecosystems on earth. Some common names for wetlands are marsh, swamp, or bog. To be called a wetland, an area must be soaked with water for part of the year. Louisiana’s wetlands wind through shallow estuaries, inlets, bays, and reefs. So what’s the big deal about these wetlands?

Wetlands provide a habitat for a large variety of wildlife and plants
Wetlands are a nursery area for fish, shrimps, crabs, oysters and other wildlife—a calm area protected by heavy waves.
Wetlands are like a kidney for other ecosystems, filtering out, cleaning, and storing water.
Migratory birds nest in the wetlands

What Oil Does to Wetlands

The glue that holds the marsh together is grass. If grasses are repeatedly covered with oil, they will suffocate. It may take years for intertidal salt marshes and sea grass beds to recover from this kind of oiling.

Oil in Louisiana wetlands, copyright Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune on nola.com

As quoted by Irving Mendelssohn, a Louisiana State University botanist who specializes in wetland plants, in an AOL News article, “Once they’re dead, the soil collapses,” he said. “Then the soil becomes flooded and can’t grow back. The low areas that become ponds, the ponds form lakes and then the wetland disappears.”

How can the marshes be saved? Some suggestions include burning the oil-covered plants, low-pressure flushing, which helps push oil into areas where it can be vacuumed up or absorbed, cutting back vegetation to leave plants intact, and adding nutrients to help speed to degradation of the oil. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has suggested dredging sand from the Gulf of Mexico and building islands to stop the oil from reaching wetlands. None of these methods is considered ideal and all have potentially serious environmental repercussions.

Even if people don’t care about wildlife and biodiversity, they should be concerned about the destruction of the wetlands. Almost all of the sea life that we consume from the Gulf of Mexico begins its life in these sea grass beds and wetlands. Also, the wetlands provide a buffer for storms and hurricanes, absorbing wind and tidal forces—of vital importance in this hurricane-prone area.

05/17/10

How the Gulf Oil Spill May Harm Dolphins

Like sea turtles and birds, dolphins and other marine mammals are extremely vulnerable to the effects of oil. There are 35,000 to 45,000 bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the largest populations of dolphins off the coast of the U.S.

Bottlenose dolphin mother and calf

Unlike fish, dolphins need to come to the surface frequently to breathe. When they surface, they may come in contact with the oil slick that now covers thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico.

Dolphins are smooth-skinned, hairless mammals with extremely sensitive skin—even more sensitive than human skin. Oil can cause chemical burns or skin irritation.

Dolphins may inhale oil and oil vapor. This may lead to damage of the airways, lung ailments, mucous membrane damage, or even death.

Oil may damage a dolphin’s eyes, which can cause ulcers, conjunctivitis, and blindness, making it difficult for them to find food, and sometimes causing starvation.

Ingesting oil can cause ulcers or internal bleeding.

Oil can impair a dolphin’s immune system and may cause secondary fungal or bacterial infections.

Oil may move up through the food chain as dolphins eat contaminated prey. Dolphins feed on fish and squid and spend much of their time in waters close to shore.

Dolphin calves may be poisoned as they can absorb oil through their mothers’ milk

Dolphins may experience stress and behavioral changes due to oil exposure.

Marine mammals are our closest relatives in the ocean—it’s heartbreaking that we have fouled their habitats and are potentially poisoning large numbers of these beautiful and intelligent animals. You can help by donating to The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, Gulfpost, MS

Most of this information in this post is from Effects of Maritime Oil Spills on Wildlife, on the Australian government website

05/12/10

How the Gulf Oil Spill May Affect Sea Turtles

During the Age of the Dinosaurs, the sea teemed with marine reptiles. But when the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, only a few reptiles remained in the sea—sea turtles, sea snakes, saltwater crocodiles, and marine iguanas.

Kemp's Ridley turtle, courtesy of www.turtlejournal.com

These ancient sea creatures have survived unto the 21st century, but most of the seven species of sea turtles are threatened or endangered. One of the most critically endangered sea turtle species—the Kemp’s Ridley—may be most affected by the recent Gulf Oil spill. Kemp’s Ridleys are one of the few sea turtle species that don’t do a lot of roaming. They stay mostly in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kemp’s Ridley (along with Olive Ridleys) are the smallest sea turtles. They are known for their unusual nesting behavior called an arribada, in which hundreds or even thousands come ashore at the same time to lay their eggs. In the 1940s, over 40,000 turtles were filmed coming ashore at one time to lay eggs. By 1980 that number had shrunk to just a few thousand. Causes of their decline are drowning in shrimp trawls, longlines, and gillnets, pollution, egg collection, hunting, degradation of their nesting sites, habitat loss, and other human-caused problems.

Shrimpers are now required by law to attach Turtle Extruder Devices (TEDs) to their nets to prevent entangled turtles from drowning. TEDs are a grid of bars with an opening at the top or bottom fitted into the neck of the shrimp trawl that allows small animals like shrimp to slip through the bars and be caught, while larger animals such as sea turtles strike the bars and are ejected.

In recent years the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles have made a recovery. In 2009 there were 197 documented nests on the Texas coasts. At Rancho Neuvo and in neighboring Mexico beaches, 8000 females nested. Unfortunately the recent oil spill may cause a severe setback in the recovery of these turtles.

How Oil Harms Turtles*

Like marine mammals, sea turtles need to come to the surface to breathe air. If turtles surface in an oil slick to breathe, oil will affect their eyes and damage airways or lungs. Imagine if you dove into a pool with oil on the surface. When you came up for air, you couldn’t help but swallow and breathe in the oil.

Sea turtles will be affected by oil through contamination of their food supply.

Sea turtles are marine (ocean) animals, but have a crucial tie to the land. Females must come ashore to lay eggs. After they lay the eggs, female turtles cover the nest (a deep hole they have dug in the sand with their flippers) and return to the ocean. The baby turtles hatch from eggs and must fend for themselves as they scramble from the nests to the ocean.

Nesting sites covered with oil can lead to the following problems:

•Digestion/absorption of oil through food contamination or direct physical contact, leading to damage to the digestive tract and other organs.

•Irritation of mucous membranes (such as those in the nose, throat and eyes) leading to inflammation and infection.

•Eggs may be contaminated, either because there is oil in the sand high up on the beach at the nesting site, or because the adult turtles are oiled as they make their way across the beach to the nesting site. Oiling of eggs may inhibit their development.

•Newly hatched turtles, after emerging from the nests, make their way over the beach to the water and may become oiled.

In addition to the oil, thousands of gallons of “dispersants” have been dumped into the Gulf in an effort to break up the oil spill. It is unclear what chemicals are in these dispersants, which will now become part of the food chain—and could contaminate the seafood we eat as well.

So far, scientists have been unable to predict the direction of the spill. It depends on weather/wind patterns, possible storms, and many other variables. If the oil gets into the loop current that swings northeast from the Gulf, it may reach the Florida Keys and eventually the Eastern Seaboard. If this happens, loggerhead turtles that nest on southeastern beaches may also be severly affected by the spill.

Several years ago, I saw a loggerhead sea turtle lay her eggs on a beach on the east coast of Florida in the shadow of Cape Canaveral—an awesome experience I will never forget. I witnessed something that had been happening for millions of years. Humans have been around for a tiny fraction of the time that sea turtles have inhabited this planet. It is our responsibility to help protect them, especially now, in the face of this potentially devastating oil spill.

The Sea Turtle Restoration Project has daily updates about sea turtles and the oil spill, and includes suggestions for how you can help.

The Carribean Conservation Corporation: Sea Turtle Survival also has good information about how oil affects sea turtles, and has lots of general information about sea turtles. I have adopted several turtles from this organization.

*Note: most of the information about sea turtles and oil came from the Australian government website, Effect of Maritime Oil Spills on Wildlife.