Frogs, whose voices were once a prominent part of wildlife sounds in the Carribbean, are barely making a peep this spring. And that silence carries deadly implications for both amphibian survival and human health.

From 9News.com:

Without new conservation measures, there could be a massive die-off of Caribbean frogs within 15 years, warned Adrell Nunez, an amphibian expert with the Santo Domingo Zoo in the Dominican Republic. "There are species that we literally know nothing about" that could be lost, he said.

Researchers such as Lopez and his wife, Ana Longo Berrios, have been fanning out across the Caribbean and returning with new and troubling evidence of the decline. In some places, especially in Haiti, where severe deforestation is added to the mix of problems, extinctions are possible.

It is part of a grim picture overall. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has found that 32 percent of the world's amphibian species are threatened or extinct, including more than 200 alone in both Mexico and Colombia.

"Everywhere we are seeing declines and it's severe," said Jan Zegarra, a biologist based in Puerto Rico for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Frogs may be less charismatic than some other troubled species, but their role in the environment is important. They are consumed by birds and snakes and they in turn are major predators of mosquitoes. Their absence could lead to a rise in malaria and dengue, not to mention discomfort.

There's more -- a lot more -- here.

A man with a deathly terror of frogs was awarded $1.6 million when a new housing project caused run-off to flood his property -- bringing along an amphibious payload.

From the Buffalo News:

Water runoff has turned most of Paul Marinaccio’s 40 acres in Clarence into a wetland.

How it happened angers him.

What came along with all that water terrifies him – frogs.

“I’m petrified of the little creatures,” said Marinaccio, 65.

If that sounds bizarre or far-fetched, consider one of Marinaccio’s childhood memories. He traces his deep-seated fear of frogs to when he was a child in an Italian vineyard, where his parents worked. He remembers wandering to a nearby property for figs and being chased away by a man holding bullfrogs.

Decades later, frogs again have Marinaccio on the run. In the spring and summer months, they show up on his driveway and lawn – keeping him inside his home. Marinaccio sued the Town of Clarence and the developer of a nearby subdivision for diverting runoff onto his land and won a $1.6 million award.

“I beat the government,” he said.

There's a lot of background to this story -- you can read the whole thing here.

The great age of the embryos is unusual because almost all known dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous ended some 125 million years after the bones at the Lufeng site were buried and fossilized.

Led by University of Toronto Mississauga paleontologist Robert Reisz, an international team of scientists from Canada, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Australia, and Germany excavated and analyzed over 200 bones from individuals at different stages of embryonic development.

"We are opening a new window into the lives of dinosaurs," says Reisz. "This is the first time we've been able to track the growth of embryonic dinosaurs as they developed. Our findings will have a major impact on our understanding of the biology of these animals."

The bones represent about 20 embryonic individuals of the long-necked sauropodomorph Lufengosaurus, the most common dinosaur in the region during the Early Jurassic period. An adult Lufengosaurus was approximately eight metres long.

The disarticulated bones probably came from several nests containing dinosaurs at various embryonic stages, giving Reisz's team the rare opportunity to study ongoing growth patterns. Dinosaur embryos are more commonly found in single nests or partial nests, which offer only a snapshot of one developmental stage.

To investigate the dinosaurs' development, the team concentrated on the largest embryonic bone, the femur. This bone showed a consistently rapid growth rate, doubling in length from 12 to 24 mm as the dinosaurs grew inside their eggs. Reisz says this very fast growth may indicate that sauropodomorphs like Lufengosaurus had a short incubation period.

Reisz's team found the femurs were being reshaped even as they were in the egg. Examination of the bones' anatomy and internal structure showed that as they contracted and pulled on the hard bone tissue, the dinosaurs' muscles played an active role in changing the shape of the developing femur. "This suggests that dinosaurs, like modern birds, moved around inside their eggs," says Reisz. "It represents the first evidence of such movement in a dinosaur."

The Taiwanese members of the team also discovered organic material inside the embryonic bones. Using precisely targeted infrared spectroscopy, they conducted chemical analyses of the dinosaur bone and found evidence of what Reisz says may be collagen fibres. Collagen is a protein characteristically found in bone.

"The bones of ancient animals are transformed to rock during the fossilization process," says Reisz. "To find remnants of proteins in the embryos is really remarkable, particularly since these specimens are over 100 million years older than other fossils containing similar organic material."

Only about one square metre of the bonebed has been excavated to date, but this small area also yielded pieces of eggshell, the oldest known for any terrestrial vertebrate. Reisz says this is the first time that even fragments of such delicate dinosaur eggshells, less than 100 microns thick, have been found in good condition.

"A find such as the Lufeng bonebed is extraordinarily rare in the fossil record, and is valuable for both its great age and the opportunity it offers to study dinosaur embryology," says Reisz. "It greatly enhances our knowledge of how these remarkable animals from the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs grew."

Photo: A flesh reconstruction of embryonic dinosaur inside egg. Artwork by D. Mazierski.

Seems unborn lizards are not helpless when predators threaten.

From ScienceNOW:

Talk about hatching an escape plan. Unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs days early if vibrations hint at a threat from a hungry predator, new research shows. The premature hatchlings literally "hit the ground running—they hatch and launch into a sprint at the same time," says behavioral ecologist J. Sean Doody, who is now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

[...]

That curtain began to lift a bit a few years ago, when Doody and student Philip Paull of Monash University in Australia began studying a population of delicate skinks (Lampropholis delicata) in a park near Sydney. There, the common lizards laid white, leathery eggs the size of aspirin capsules in rock crevices. The eggs generally incubate for 4 to 8 weeks before hatching, but Doody got a surprise in 2010, when he and Paull were plucking eggs from the crevices to make measurements. "They started hatching in our hands, at just a touch—it shocked us," Doody recalls. "It turned into a real mess, they were just hatching everywhere."

Soon, Doody launched a more systematic study of the phenomenon. In two lab experiments, the researchers compared the hatching dates for skink eggs exposed to vibrations with those of eggs that weren't shaken. And in three field experiments, they poked and prodded eggs with a small stick, or squeezed them gently with their fingers to measure how sensitive the eggs were to the kinds of disturbances a predator, such as a snake, might cause. They also measured how far the premature hatchlings could dash.

Together, the experiments offer "compelling evidence" that embryonic skinks can detect and respond to predator-like signals, the authors write in the March 2013 issue of Copeia. The vibrated laboratory eggs, for instance, hatched an average of 3.4 days earlier than the unshaken controls. And in the field, the hatching of disturbed eggs was "explosive," they note; the newborns often broke out of the egg and then sprinted more than one-half meter to nearby cover in just a few seconds. "It's amazing," Doody says. "It can be hard to see because it happens so quick."

Read more here.

It started in still-frigid New England, hit half a dozen aquariums on the way, and ended up on the beaches of Jacksonville, Florida, carrying 52 cold-stunned sea turtles back to warmer climes after a period of rehabilitation at each aquarium.

It was dubbed the Great Sea Turtle Trek. From the National Aquarium's WATERblog:

The #SeaTurtleTrek release was a great success!

After leaving Baltimore last night and driving through the night, our team and staff from New England Aquarium made it to the beach in Florida with 52 endangered sea turtles.

Upon their arrival in Jacksonville, health samples were taken from each turtle.

Soon, it was time for the big beach release! The turtles were released by group in the following order: South Carolina Aquarium, Virginia Aquarium, Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, National Marine Life Center, University of New England, National Aquarium and finally, New England Aquarium!

Read the whole saga in reverse chronological order here!

Photo: Chet, a Kemp’s ridley turtle at the National Aquarium, getting ready for his road trip.

This image of a cape gopher snake uploaded by kingsnake.com user pitparade, is our herp photo of the day!



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Scientists continue to study the genome of the painted turtle, seeking clues in its amazing ability to survive and thrive in difficult environmental conditions that might help human victims of stroke, heart attack, and hypothermia.

From 680News.com:

The shelled reptile, named for the bright yellow stripes that adorn its body, is a fresh water species that can freeze solid and return to life when thawed.

It can also hold its breath for up to four days at room temperature without suffering oxygen deprivation and up to four months when hibernating, said Brad Shaffer of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and one of the lead authors of the study published in the latest edition of the journal Genome Biology.

“Those are fascinating ecological, physiological features that have evolved in turtles … so as a biologist those are fascinating things to learn more about, more about the genes that allow them to do that,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer and his colleagues hope solving the DNA puzzle may one day lead to innovations in treating hypothermia, frostbite, heart attacks or strokes.

The DNA confirmed for scientists that the turtles have evolved at a … turtle’s pace, and have in fact changed little in design over the past 210 million years.

“Turtles are nothing short of an enigma,” Richard K. Wilson, director of Washington University’s Genome Institute and one of the authors, said in a statement. “We could learn a lot from them.”

In addition to their ability to freeze and thaw without suffering organ or tissue damage, they have longevity and continue to reproduce at advanced ages, he said.

Read more here.

The disastrous ExxonMobil oil spill in an Arkansas residential neighborhood is threatening reptiles and other local wildlife.

From The NY Daily News:

The evacuation of almost two dozen homes after an oil pipeline ruptured in Arkansas has left an eerie sight in one neighborhood — and many unanswered questions.

“That neighborhood was like a scene from ‘The Walking Dead,’” state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday after visiting the Little Rock suburb of Mayflower. “There were still Easter decorations on homes, but there was not a soul in sight other than people in Hazmat suits.”

ExxonMobil is investigating what caused its Pegasus pipeline, which carries oil from southern Illinois to the Texas Gulf Coast, to burst open March 29.

[...]

Officials say at least 16 oily birds, seven turtles, nine reptiles, a beaver and a muskrat have been recovered for treatment. At least seven ducks died as the result of the spill.

Read the full story here.

Usually when the words "endangered wildlife" and "smuggling" get used in a headline, the story is set in some exotic tropical location. Not this time.

From Syracuse.com:

A North Country woman who smuggled more than 200 turtles, alligators, iguanas and other wildlife into Canada pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Syracuse.

The endangered and threatened animals were worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Benedict in a news release.

Olivia Terrance, 28 of Hogansburg, NY, faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced Aug. 5, Benedict said.

Court papers show she smuggled the rare animals across the Saint Lawrence River into Canada on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, which spans both countries. The animals were transported on two dates: by car on July 8, 2009 and by boat Aug. 4, 2010, according to a memorandum by U.S. District Court Judge Norman Mordue.

Terrance was delivering the animals to her cousin, Dennis Day, in Canada, to sell to retailers and collectors, prosecutors said.

Read the whole story here, eh.

A new gecko study from the University of Akron in Ohio may help scientists develop an underwater adhesive.

From National Geographic:

To examine a gecko's cling, [study leader Alyssa] Stark and colleagues put harnesses on six tokay geckos (Gekko gecko) and put them on four surfaces which varied in their wettability, or their degree of water resistance.

The reptiles' feet were submerged in water on glass, plexiglass, a transparent plastic often used as a glass alternative, and Teflon.

Plexiglass and the transparent plastic "mimic the surface chemistry of the leaves geckos are really walking on in their natural environments," Stark said.

As a gecko moved across each surface, the team applied a force in the opposite direction until the animal slipped, which allowed them to measure the animal's grip.

The results showed that on glass, a film of water developed between the geckos' toes and the surface, reducing their ability to stick to the glass. But on plexiglass and the plastic, the geckos' toes create air pockets that allows their feet to stay dry—preserving the stickiness.

Read the whole story, and see a video, here.

Photo: National Geographic

Scientists may have found a reliable method of monitoring populations of threatened reptiles and amphibians, using a technique once thought limited to the tracking of warm-blooded species.

From Science Live:

Camera traps are frequently used to take pictures and monitor populations of large mammals like tigers and leopards, but until now, they haven't been used often to count Komodo dragons ― the world's largest lizards ― or other reptiles and amphibians.

Recent research suggests that they can and should be used to keep tabs on these animals, and that cameras may beat the physical traps currently used to monitor Komodo dragon populations.

Camera traps work by taking pictures when alerted to the presence of an animal by a motion detector, often an infrared one that detects heat. That's a potential problem for reptiles and amphibians, which are cold-blooded, and thus often have the same temperature as the surrounding environment.

But the study, published online last week in the journal PLOS ONE, found that cameras worked about as well as traps at detecting the presence of Komodo dragons ― and, in certain areas, did even better. Plus, they require much less manpower to operate, and are far less expensive. With cameras, there is also no need to set up a large trap, bait it with goat meat and free the animal afterward.

Find out how this discovery is being used to protect the largest of all lizards here.

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