Helping to bring awareness of the frog extinction crisis
Take a leap! Join our cause to raise awareness about the threats frogs face in the world's changing environment, and to spread the message that healthy frogs mean a healthy planet for all.
For over 200 million years, ponds, marshes, grasslands, and rain forests have come alive with the calls of frogs. Yet these remarkable and colorful animals are declining at such a rapid rate that they are being called the Earth’s next dinosaurs. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction. To read more, click here!
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"My blog is carbon neutral" is an initiative by the Arbor Day Foundation to plant trees in Plumas National Forest in Northern California. The goal is to reforest 5,500 acres with 792,000 trees.
Do you do fieldwork or amphibian research with a zoo, environmental organization, university, or government agency? If so, please consider writing a guest post for us about your work (@300 words). Email it to us at: info@frogsaregreen.com.
Archive for the ‘Frogs and the Rainforest’ Category
A pea-sized frog species, Microhyla nepenthicola, was discovered this past week in Malaysian rainforests on the island of Borneo. This miniature frog, measuring between 10 to 12 millimeters (less than one-half inch), is the smallest frog species discovered so far in Asia, Africa, or Europe. The tiny frog is a type of frog called a microhylid, composed of mini-frogs under 15 millimeters. The discovery was made by Drs. Indraneil Das of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation and Dr. Alexander Haas of Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum of Hamburg.
Photograph courtesy Indraneil Das, Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation
The tiny frogs were found near pitcher plants, which grow in damp, shady forests. The frogs deposit their eggs on the sides of the globular pitcher, and tadpoles grow in the liquid accumulated inside the plant.
What is the world’s smallest frog? Two 9.8-mm-long amphibians in the New World—the gold frog in Brazil (Brachycephalus didactylus) and the Monte Iberia dwarf frog(Eleutherodactylus iberia) in Cuba are believed to be the world’s smallest frog species. They are about the size of a house fly—very tiny frogs indeed.
Susan and I are hosting family and friends this week and so will be re-running a few posts from this past year. It’s been a HOT summer in the NYC area. We thought we’d re-post a holiday post to remind us of cooler days ahead. Also, if you’re a teacher this is a nice little poster to put up in your classroom in September. This post is originally from November 2009.
We have a lot to be grateful for at FROGS ARE GREEN. We’ve received over 10,000 visitors since we started the blog back in May. (Update: we are now up to 4500 visitors a month!). We are so grateful for your comments and for your participation in our blog.
As a token of our thanks, Susan designed a poster of our mascot, the Red-Eyed Tree Frog, that you can download and print out for FREE (in three different sizes). We hope you enjoy it and will put up a copy at your home, school, or office to spread the message about our amphibian friends.
Don’t forget to check our galleries of our photo contest photos, wonderful frog art from kids, and photos of wild backyards! (Click on the pictures in the right column of the blog. Feel free to send us your pictures to be included, too!)
Click here and it will take you to the download page.
Update 8/10: We have two contests going on right now—a photo contest and a kids’ art contest. Summer is a good time to take pictures of frogs and to do some drawing, so please consider entering! See Contest link at top of page.
Today is Save the Frogs Day, organized and created by conservation biologist Dr. Kerry Kriger. Tune in to hear an interview today with Dr. Kriger at 4:30 US Eastern or 1:30 PST (Sirius 112/XM 157) on Martha Stewart Living Radio.
As it’s been almost a year since we began the Frogs Are Green blog, we thought we’d share some thoughts about it with you. At first when we told our friends and family we were starting a blog to increase awareness about the global amphibian decline, they were a bit mystified, even amused. But I’m happy to say that a year later, almost all have become enthusiastic supporters. So we’d like to give you a few “talking points” in case you come across people who say with skepticism—frogs needs saving? Huh?
Frogs, of course, are not the only animals that need help, and we are personally involved with efforts to save other animals, particularly marine animals. But amphibians as a class of animals are threatened with extinction. That’s like saying that all mammals might soon be extinct. This is the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. Frogs have survived for 360 million years (and were on Earth long before the dinosaurs) and yet one-third or more of frog species are in danger of extinction.
Frogs are bioindicators—they reflect back to us the environmental health of our planet. Their permeable skin makes them especially vulnerable to environmental contaminants, such as agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical chemicals, particularly endocrine disruptors. Frogs are manifesting reproductive deformities and hormonal disorders, possibly as a result of the stew of chemicals in the water in which they live. As endocrine distruptors are in the water we drink and are in dozens of consumer products we use everyday, we have reason to be concerned. Some scientists believe that an increase in the incidence of newborn baby boys born with genital deformities might be due to endocrine disruptors they have absorbed in utero.
Biodiversity is of critical importance to all of us—scientists still don’t fully understand how all elements interact in an ecosystem, but we do know that disasters occur when we alter even one small part of it (by introducing nonnative species etc). Frogs form an important part of ecosystems as both predator and prey.
While there is no cure yet for the chytrid fungus devastating frog populations, it should make us pause to consider that a whole class of animals could be wiped out by a worldwide fungus. Why aren’t frogs able to fight this off this infection? What are the underlying causes of the fungus? There are so many questions that need answers.
Frogs are subject to all the usual environmental woes—habitat loss, pollution, global warming, overcollection, invasive species. By helping frogs, we help other animals that might not have such a high profile (although frogs have a pretty low profile, all things considered). By focusing on the rainforest frogs, for example, we also help preserve the rainforest and its animals.
Frogs are part of our cultural heritage—our folktales, fairy tales, myths, children’s stories, and legends. In many cultures, they are a symbol of good luck, fertility, healing, prosperity, and are associated with rain and good harvests. And don’t forget our friends Kermit, and Frog and Toad, and Mr. Toad.
The amphibian decline is an environmental issue that you can do something about, possibly in your own backyard or neighborhood. We recently received a comment from a man in Georgia who decided not to fill in a pond on his property because he noticed that several frog species live in the pond. Another commenter from Pennsylvania has asked how he can create a frog pond in his backyard. You can lend your voice to land conservation efforts that protect vernal pools, for example.
Rachel Carson warned in her 1961 book Silent Spring about a world without birds. Can you imagine a world without frogs? Frogs, after all, are the Earth’s most ancient singers. We want to continue to hear their choruses for a long, long time.
So as you enjoy Save the Frogs day, listen to some frog songs. And please join us in helping to save frogs. We’d love to hear from you.
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
