03/1/10

First Monogamous Frogs Discovered

This past week the first monogamous frogs were discovered in the rainforest of South America. Monogamy isn’t usual in the amphibian world. Male frogs usually love ’em and leave ’em.

But Dr. Jason Brown, previously of East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, and his colleagues, discovered a monogamous frog species Ranitomeya imitator, known as the mimic poison frog,

According to the BBC Earth News article, “Peru Poison Frog Reveals Secret of Monogamy,” after mating, a female mimic poison frog lays her eggs on the surface of leaves. After the tadpoles hatch, the male frog carries them one by one on his back to pools of water that collect in bromeliad leaves high up in the branches of trees. Each tadpole is put into its own tiny pool and the father looks after them. When the tadpoles become hungry, the male calls to his female partner who lays a non-fertile egg, which the tadpole eats, in each pool.

Why are these frogs monogamous and others aren’t? Scientists believe the mimic poison frogs have become mongamous as they evolved to live in small pools. The frogs wouldn’t have survived without the care of both mother and father because there is little natural food in these tiny pools. If the pools were bigger, there would have been more available food and the the frogs wouldn’t have to work together to feed and raise the tadpoles.

“These frogs are truly devoted to their offspring, and to each other,” says Dr. Brown, who is now at Duke University.

Father and mother R. imitator frogs guard a leaf pool where the mother just deposited a nutritious egg for the tadpole to eat. Photo by Jason Brown, from Science magazine site

Image from ScienceNOW blog (Science magazine)

02/22/10

Wood Frogs Are (Almost) Celebrating Spring

In October, when we wrote our post Winter Turns Frogs into Frogsicles, the wood frogs and spring peepers had settled down for their long (frozen) winter nap. This blog post from The National Parks Traveler, Frogs are a Sure Sign of Spring, But that Doesn’t Mean You Won’t Hear Them Now, reminds us that even though it’s still winter (at least in the Northeast), it’s almost spring for the wood frogs. As the snow melts and the frogs unfreeze in late winter/early spring, the young frogs have one thing on their minds: the males start calling immediately to potential mates.

I found this lovely video on YouTube by someone called Mysterious Susan (not our Susan though). It does have a mysterious quality as a reminder of the cycle of life.

Also, check out this blog post, “As Winter Wanes,” in the East Hampton (Long Island, New York) Star about what songbirds, salamanders, and other animals are up to as we approach spring and the daylight hours get longer every day.

02/12/10

A Frog Love Shack

While humans may need flowers, chocolate, and a candlelit dinner to get in the mood for love, amphibians have quite different requirements. The Bristol Zoo Garden in England has designed what it calls the AmphiPod to encourage frog love. The zoo opened this special “love shack” to breed two endangered frog species—the Lemur Leaf frog and the Golden Mantella.

Lemur Leaf Frog ( Hylomantis lemur), Ron Holt, Courtesy Atlanta Botanical Garden

The mating chambers will provide a safe home for these frogs, which are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of threatened species.

In this BBC video Amanda Parr takes a look around the new facility with the Bristol Zoo’s Curator of Reptiles, Tim Skelton, giving her tour a Valentine’s Day spin.

As Skelton says of the project:

Until a solution is found to help stop the [chrytid] fungus in the wild, the safekeeping and captive management of threatened amphibians is the only way to ensure their long-term survival.

Our new AmphiPod will allow us to keep frogs in a safe, isolated environment, away from any threat of disease, as well as giving our keepers the opportunity to learn the techniques required for the specialist amphibian care we can provide in the AmphiPod. In future we will be able to provide a safe haven to other amphibian species in immediate danger of extinction.

However, the Zoo is still £30,000 short of the target amount which will help pay for the continued cost of running the facility for the next three years. For a Valentine’s gift with a difference, why not make a donation towards the Zoo’s “love shack”?

To find out how you can help, please see the Bristol Zoo Gardens website for more information.

Image: , Lemur Leaf Frog (Hylomantis lemur), Ron Holt, Courtesy Atlanta Botanical Garden, from the Amphibian Ark site

02/9/10

Giant Salamander: Earth's Largest Amphibian

We confess to paying most of our attention in our posts on Frogs Are Green to the stars of the amphibian world—frogs—and not so much on other amphibians. So to make up for that, we’d like to introduce you to Earth’s largest amphibian—the giant salamander of China and Japan.

BB-Japanese-Giant-Salamander

This creature is considered a living fossil because it hasn’t changed much in 30 million years. To put things in perspective, 30 million years ago our ancestors were little primates hanging from trees. It would be millions of years before some of these primates descended from the trees, and millions of years after that before the first humans.

The giant salamander lives in mountain streams and lakes and can grow up to 6 feet long. It has four digits on its front legs and five digits on its back legs and is covered with a slimy protective mucous. It spends most of its time walking on the river bottom, though it can swim quickly. On land, its small legs won’t carry it and it must drag itself along.

Like many amphibians, the giant salamander is endangered due to habitat loss. Construction of dams converts their free-flowing stream habitats into standing water or dries them up completely. They are also vulnerable to water pollution from mining activity and farming throughout their range.

Other threats to their habitat includes deforestation around the streams. This exacerbates soil erosion and causes increased runoff and siltation of the streams, reducing water quality and making it difficult for the salamanders to get enough oxygen through their skin. In addition, the giant salamander is considered a delicacy and is also used in traditional Chinese medicine.*

On the BBC News site, Dr. Takeyoshi Tochimoto, director of the Hanzaki Institute near Hyogo in western Japan, gives a guided tour of this unusual creature. (“Hanzaki” is the local name for the giant salamander.) After watching this video, however, I have decided not to hug a giant salamander if I ever meet one. They have a very large mouth and several hundred small teeth on the top and bottom and can bite if angry, causing serious injury. Generally, however, this is a shy and secretive animal and is unfortunately relatively easy to catch.

*Information from BBC Wildlife Finder. Image above courtesy of National Geographic.

02/1/10

Cane Toads Invade Sundance!

Susan and I are both eager to see filmmaker Mark Lewis’s Cane Toads: The Conquest, which has received good reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. This film, in 3-D, is a follow-up to his cult favorite of 25 years ago, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.

Here’s a description of the film from the website:

Shot against the harsh and beautiful landscape of northern Australia, Cane Toads: The Conquest tracks the unstoppable journey of the toad across the continent. Director Mark Lewis injects his trademark irreverence and humor into the story as he follows a trail of human conflict, bizarre culture and extraordinary close encounters.

Filmed with high-resolution 3D technology, Cane Toads is the first Australian digital 3D feature film. Custom designed equipment allows viewers to get up close and personal with these curious creatures like never before. The unique viewing experience is like being immersed in the world of the toad.

Cane Toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 to control sugar cane larvae. Unfortunately they didn’t do that—instead this adaptable toad has thrived without natural predators and now numbers in the millions. The toads are poisonous when eaten by other animals, including native species and pets. They’ve caused other problems as well (for example, they eat the insects that other animals, such as skinks, depend on). Clearly, the importation of cane toads into Australia has been a huge ecological disaster.

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Cane Toads: The Conquest isn’t a conventional animal documentary. According to the film’s website:

[Cane Toads] is a truly poignant environmental cautionary tale on the issue of invasive species and human folly. Some will see this story as a tragedy, some a comedy of errors, and still others a heroic journey across a harsh yet beautiful continent. As the world wrestles with the idea that we have irretrievably altered our own ecosystem, these bulbous creatures may be the ultimate metaphor for the inevitable path upon which we have set ourselves.

For more information, watch Anne Thompson’s interview with Mark Lewis on her blog TOH! Thompson on Hollywood. Susan I and hope a major distributor picks up the film so we can see it in our area!

01/26/10

Yasuni National Park, Ecuador: An Amphibian Eden

Yasuni National Park, courtesy UTNE.com

Scientists have recently identified Yasuni National Park in Ecuador as one of the most biologically diverse places in South America, and perhaps on earth. As Shawn McCracken of Texas State University—San Marcos, recently said, “The 150 amphibian species throughout Yasuni is a world record for an area this size. There are more species of frogs and toads within Yasuni than are native to the United States and Canada combined.”

Unfortunately this Eden sits on oil reserves and is threatened by proposed oil development projects. McCracken and other scientists from Ecuador, the United States, and Europe have proposed a moratorium on new oil exploration until the effects of such projects can be explored.

Reading about this, we couldn’t help but think about the movie Avatar and the attempted destruction of the planet Pandora to mine unobtanium. Unfortunately, we humans aren’t as wise as the Na’vi—yet. Let’s hope that Ecuador will preserve this incredible pocket of biodiversity and not be so shortsighted as to destroy parts of it for oil.

Here is more information from Save the Frogs and the Environmental News Service.