Photo Credit: ©WCS A head-started female Siamese crocodile nesting in the wild

In a huge win for conservation, the first ever nesting behavior has been observed by reintroduced female Siamese crocodile that resulted in two hatchlings! The hatchlings are now being headstarted by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The authors note: “While collecting eggs for incubation in May 2022, we were able to identify a unique series of notched tail scutes on a female C. siamensis as she aggressively defended a nest.

“From these markings we determined the female was hatched on 11 August 2012 (age = 9.75 years) and released in March 2014. A camera-trap placed at the nest on 11 May 2022 and recovered on 5 July 2022 recorded 1724 images.

“These images indicated the female remained in attendance at the nest throughout the monitoring period. Camera-trap imagery captured eight nest repair events and two nest defense events; during the later the female defended the nest from village dogs.”

They have managed to reduce the mortality with their headstart program by an amazing 90%! To read the paper and full story, click here.

USGS biologist holds an endangered yellow-legged frog recovered from a fire-ravaged stretch of Little Rock Creek, just off Angeles Crest Highway 2 near Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

For over 500 species of frogs, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or more easily BD has been devastating. It has decimated populations worldwide and lead to extinctions of of 90 possible species threatening more world-wide. Scientists have been struggling to come up with a cure of any sort and have started to look at the possibility of infecting the fungus with a virus.

Meet BdDV-1, a viral fragment discovered by scientists whose paper was recently published by the journal Current Biology. The researchers found it in much the same way that one disentangles a knot, by pulling on individual threads to see where they lead. While examining the BD fungus to learn about weaknesses, they discovered a single-stranded DNA virus trapped within the genome of the fungus. Although this only applied to certain strains, when infected they produced fewer spores than the uninfected fungi. Now the next step is to see if researchers can clone and engineer this virus so that it kills BD and saves the frogs.

That will not be the easiest task to accomplish, however, for a big reason: Currently the virus makes the fungus more deadly to the frogs, rather than less so.

Now the question remains if they can reenginer the virus to change how it impacts the virus. To read more about the process, visit Salon here.