10-02-2013, 04:24 PM
HerpDigest.org: The Only Free Weekly Electronic Newsletter That Reports on the Latest News on Herpetological Conservation, Husbandry and Science
Volume # 13 Issue # 44 9/30/13
Publisher/Editor- Allen Salzberg
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The Map Turtle and Sawback Atlas
Ecology, Evolution, Distribution, and Conservation
By Peter V. Lindeman
Hardcover, Illustrations: 70 color photos, 164 b&w illus., 14 maps, 33 tables
Published: Early 12/13-Which means your copies will arrive late 12/13 to 1/14
$45.00 PLUS $7.00 S&H
288 pages, 6.125" x 9.25"
Covering all facets of the biology of a little-known genus, Peter V. Lindeman’s lavishly illustrated Map Turtle and Sawback Atlas is both a scientific treatise and an engaging introduction to a striking group of turtles. Everything we know about these beautiful animals so far.
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”The Tortoise- Volume 1 Number 2 - It's 160 glossy pages long. Over 160 color photos. And I have still managed to keep the price down to $20.00 each $6.00 S&H in the U.S.
“The Tortoise Magazine, [is] ostensibly Us Weekly for people who follow reptiles instead of Brad Pitt and ‘The Bachelor’”
-The Wall Street Journal
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1) The response of a sleepy lizard social network to altered ecological conditions
2) Swiss customs seize rare frogs in taxi
3) Torrent Frogs Use Toes, Belly, Thighs to Hold Tight Under Waterfall-Like Conditions
4) Frogs that hear with their mouth
5) Missouri Ponds Provide Clue to Killer Frog Disease
6) Burmese python trap: Will it work? - Federal wildlife officials will test a new trap designed to capture Burmese pythons.
7) Native and non-native reptiles feeling the stress of Colorado floods
8) Specially trained dogs help researchers sniff out salamanders
9) Woodland salamanders indicators of forest ecosystem recovery
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Some Other Books on Sale-See below for more info and how to order.
Turtles, Frogs, Geckos: 3 Separate Books From The Animal Answer Guide Series: Q&A for the Curious Naturalist
Lizard Social Behavior
Patterns of Distribution of Amphibians: A Global Perspective
The Rise of Amphibians: 365 Million Years of Evolution
Turtles of the World
Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles
Biology of the Snapping Turtle ( Chelydra serpentina)
The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles
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1) The response of a sleepy lizard social network to altered ecological conditions
Animal Behaviour
Volume 86, Issue 4, October 2013, Pages 763–772
• Stephanie S. Godfreya, b, , , S.Godfrey@murdoch.edu.au
• Andrew Sihc,
• C. Michael Bulla
a School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
b School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
c Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, U.S.A.
Highlights
We compared sleepy lizard social networks across 3 ecologically varying years.
Lizard body condition, activity and home range use varied among years.
The number and strength of connections in the network were stable across years.
Reproductive associations were weakest in the driest year of the study.
The use of social networks to describe animal social structure is increasing, yet our understanding of how social networks respond to changing ecological conditions remains limited. Animal behaviour is often constrained by temporal or spatial variation in ecological conditions; how do behaviour and social organization respond to changing ecological conditions? We used a social network approach to ask this question in the pair-living sleepy lizard, Tiliqua rugosa. We attached GPS data loggers to lizards to record their movement, activity and social interactions during their activity period (October–December) in 2008–2010. The years varied substantially in ecological conditions, from hot and dry in 2008 to cool and wet in 2010. Our aim was not to suggest how individual climatic or ecological factors influence social organization, but to explore the stability of social structure over varying conditions. Lizards spent less time active and overlapped in home range area more with conspecifics in the driest year of the study (2008) than in subsequent years. Despite this variation in behaviour, the number and strength of connections in the social network were stable across years. Intrasexual associations were similar across years, but there was a lower incidence of intersexual associations in 2008 than in the other 2 years. Among male–female dyads, pairing intensity was lower in 2008, while for males, extrapair strength was higher in 2008. These results suggest that although the overall social network is tolerant to changes in ecological conditions, the nature of contacts within the network shifts in response to ecological variation.
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2) Swiss customs seize rare frogs in taxi
Yahoo News, 9/26/13
During a routine check at a border crossing, Swiss customs officers made an unexpected discovery: 35 brightly coloured rare frogs and a gecko hidden in the boot of a taxi.
The French taxi driver was alone in the vehicle when he was stopped on September 14 at a border crossing with Germany, and tried to smuggle the creatures into Switzerland without the required documentation, the Swiss customs service said in a statement on Thursday.
The tiny, brightly coloured Oophaga, Excidobates and Ranitomeya frogs and the dwarf gecko are all endangered species.
Packed into small, plastic boxes for the journey, the amphibians and the reptile were immediately seized and a criminal probe was launched against the driver, the customs office said.
The Frenchman, whose name was not given, risks fines of more than 2,000 Swiss francs ($A2,360), it added.
Importing animals of this type into Switzerland requires a permit from the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office and a certificate from the organisation that oversees the trade of endangered species, in addition to customs declarations.
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3) Torrent Frogs Use Toes, Belly, Thighs to Hold Tight Under Waterfall-Like Conditions
Sep. 25, 2013 — Torrent frogs use their toes, belly, and thighs to attach to rough, wet, and steep surfaces, according to results published September 25 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Thomas Endlein from the Centre for Cell Engineering at the University of Glasgow and colleagues from other institutions.
In a multipart study, the researchers compared the attachment abilities of two species: torrent frogs (Staurois guttatus) and tree frogs (Rhacophorus pardalis). They found that the torrent frog is better able to attach to extremely wet, steep, and rough surfaces due to its superior attachment abilities. Frog attachment to surfaces was measured under different conditions of roughness and fast-flowing water on a slowly rotating platform. On dry, smooth surfaces, both frog species attached to steep slopes equally well; however, on wet, rough surfaces, the torrent frogs attached significantly better than tree frogs.
To find out why this might be, researchers used imaging to visualize the attachment process and discovered that both frog species use their toes, belly, and thighs to adhere to the surface. However, the torrent frogs increased the use of their belly and thighs as the surface became steeper, managing to stay put until the platform was almost upside down. In contrast, tree frogs often lost the contact of their belly and thigh skin with the steeper platform and therefore detached earlier.
Moreover, using scanning electron microscopy to visualize the shape of the cells on the toe pads of both species, the authors found that the torrent frogs' were slightly elongated compared to those in the tree frogs. These cells create channels that facilitate the drainage of excess fluid underneath the pad, possibly providing a further advantage for holding on. Endlein expands, "Torrent frogs adhere to very wet and rough surfaces by attaching not only their specialised toe pads (like many tree frogs do) but also by using their belly and ventral thigh skin. In addition, torrent frogs exhibit elongated cells on their toe pads which might help to drain off excess water for close surface attachment."
Journal Reference:
1. Thomas Endlein, W. Jon P. Barnes, Diana S. Samuel, Niall A. Crawford, Ang Bee Biaw, Ulmar Grafe. Sticking under Wet Conditions: The Remarkable Attachment Abilities of the Torrent Frog, Staurois guttatus. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e73810 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073810
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4) Frogs that hear with their mouth
X-rays reveal a new hearing mechanism for animals without an ear
Australasian Science, 9/2/13, Gardiner's frogs from the Seychelles islands, one of the smallest frogs in the world, do not possess a middle ear with an eardrum yet can croak themselves, and hear other frogs. An international team of scientists using X-rays has now solved this mystery and established that these frogs are using their mouth cavity and tissue to transmit sound to their inner ears. The results are published in PNAS.
The team led by Renaud Boistel from CNRS and University of Poitiers, comprised also scientists from Institut Langevin of ESPCI ParisTech, the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique in Marseilles, the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of Evry (France), the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles, and the European Synchrotron ESRF in Grenoble.
The way sound is heard is common to many lineages of animals and appeared during the Triassic age (200-250 million years ago). Although the auditory systems of the four-legged animals have undergone many changes since, they have in common the middle ear with eardrum and ossicles, which emerged independently in the major lineages. On the other hand, some animals notably most frogs, do not possess an outer ear like humans, but a middle ear with an eardrum located directly on the surface of the head. Incoming sound waves make the eardrum vibrate, and the eardrum delivers these vibrations using the ossicles to the inner ear where hair cells translate them into electric signals sent to the brain. Is it possible to detect sound in the brain without a middle ear? The answer is no because 99.9% of a sound wave reaching an animal is reflected at the surface of its skin.
"However, we know of frog species that croak like other frogs but do no have tympanic middle ears to listen to each other. This seems to be a contradiction," says Renaud Boistel from the IPHEP of the University of Poitiers and CNRS. "These small animals, Gardiner's frogs, have been living isolated in the rainforest of the Seychelles for 47 to 65 million years, since these islands split away from the main continent. If they can hear, their auditory system must be a survivor of life forms on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana."
To establish whether these frogs actually use sound for communicate with each other, the scientists set up loudspeakers in their natural habitat and broadcast pre-recorded frog songs. This caused males present in the rainforest to answer, proving that they were able to hear the sound from the loudspeakers.
The next step was to identify the mechanism by which these seemingly deaf frogs were able to hear sound. Various mechanisms have been proposed: an extra-tympanic pathway through the lungs, muscles which in frogs connect the pectoral girdle to the region of the inner ear, or bone conduction. "Whether body tissue will transport sound or not depends on its biomechanical properties. With X-ray imaging techniques here at the ESRF, we could establish that neither the pulmonary system nor the muscles of these frogs contribute significantly to the transmission of sound to the inner ears", says Peter Cloetens, a scientist at the ESRF who took part in the study. "As these animals are tiny, just one centimetre long, we needed X-ray images of the soft tissue and the bony parts with micrometric resolution to determine which body parts contribute to sound propagation."
Numerical simulations helped to investigate the third hypothesis, that the sound was received through the frog's heads. These simulations confirmed that the mouth acts as a resonator, or amplifier, for the frequencies emitted by this species. Synchrotron X-ray imaging on different species showed that the transmission of the sound from the oral cavity to the inner ear has been optimized by two evolutionary adaptations: a reduced thickness of the tissue between the mouth and the inner ear and a smaller number of tissue layers between the mouth and the inner ear. "The combination of a mouth cavity and bone conduction allows Gardiner's frogs to perceive sound effectively without use of a tympanic middle ear", concludes Renaud Boistel.
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5) Missouri Ponds Provide Clue to Killer Frog Disease
Sep. 25, 2013 — The skin fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), also known as amphibian chytrid, first made its presence felt in 1993 when dead and dying frogs began turning up in Queensland, Australia. Since then it has sickened and killed frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians worldwide, driving hundreds of species to extinction.
As a postdoctoral researcher Kevin Smith studied Bd in South Africa, home to the African clawed frog, a suspected vector for the fungus. When he took a position at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is now interim director of the Tyson Research Center and adjunct professor of biology, he worked on other problems.
But whenever he visited a pond, he collected tadpoles and checked their mouth parts (often a fungal hot spot) under the microscope, just out of curiosity.
So Smith recruited a team of students to study the ecosystems of 29 ponds in east-central Missouri. The team assayed larval amphibians for chytrid, collected physical and chemical data, and identified amphibian, macroinvertebrate and zooplankton species living in the ponds.
"I was half expecting it to be just an absolute mess, that there would be no distinguishing characteristic about ponds that have chytrid or ponds that don't," he said. "But instead, we found that the ponds that had chytrid were consistently more similar to one another than the ponds that didn't have chytrid in many different measures."
"That's a very powerful finding," he said. "The thinking had been that chytrid required keratin, appropriate temperatures and water -- and that was it. That's what we were stuck with. Now we know that there must be additional constraints because some ponds that meet these criteria don't harbor the fungus."
A statistical technique for ferreting out causal relationships suggested that this pattern was an indirect effect mediated by the ponds' invertebrate communities.
"They may be alternative hosts," Smith said. "That would be the most parsimonious explanation." But they might also be reservoirs (sites where the fungus can survive when there is no available host).
"The presence or absence of alternative hosts or reservoirs has a huge effect on the dynamics of the disease, and ultimately on the fate of the amphibians it attacks. If there are reservoirs we need to know about them, because otherwise it will be impossible to interrupt the chain of transmission," he said.
More evidence has since accumulated against the suspect group that fell out of the statistics of the pond study.
One group, looking for a model organism that could be used to study chytrid, showed that it can infect and kill the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Another team reported that crayfish are able to transmit chytrid, which infects the lining of their gastrointestinal tracts.
"Focusing only on amphibians to understand chytrid is like focusing only on people to understand Lyme disease," Smith said. "In the case of Lyme disease, we know that mice matter, that deer matter, that oak trees matter. Many different factors lead to there being a lot of Lyme in some cases and not others," Smith said.
Smith hopes that research in areas where chytrid is endemic may be able to help amphibians in areas where it is epidemic. The only alternative so far is the Amphibian Ark, a global effort to maintain threatened amphibians in captivity until they can be "secured in the wild."
He found the fungus in about a third of the ponds whose tadpoles he checked. The obvious question was why only a third? Why didn't it occur in all amphibian populations in a region where it is found?
The amphibians and the fungus have reached an evolutionary truce in Missouri, where the chytrid is endemic rather than epidemic. Because there was no pressure to rescue an amphibian population, Smith had the time and the opportunity to look more broadly and to study the entire pond ecosystem.
Together with then-undergraduate student Alex Strauss, Smith collected physical and chemical data and surveyed the species living in 29 ponds in east-central Missouri. The results of this study are published in the Sept. 25 edition of PLOS ONE.
Somewhat to Smith's surprise, it was statistically possible to distinguish infected from non-infected ponds, a finding he likens to being able to predict that influenza will circulate in some cities but not others.
"We don't know exactly what the key factors are but just knowing that not every pond appears to be suitable for chytrid in a given year is a very big step," he said.
The study also suggested that patterns of Bd infection might be an indirect effect of variations in invertebrate communities. What this meant was unclear, since chytrid was thought to be an amphibian specialist.
But while the pond study was underway other researchers announced that crayfish and nematodes can be infected with chytrid, raising the possibility that invertebrates act as alternative hosts or biological reservoirs for the fungus.
"Alternative hosts and reservoirs have been a key missing piece in our understanding of chytrid epidemiology," Smith said. The fungus, like any pathogen, cannot be effectively controlled unless all its hiding places are known.
Chytrid, or more properly amphibian chytrid, since there are about 1,000 species of fungus in the class Chytridiomycetes, specializes on keratin, a structural protein found in the skin, hair, nails and similar tissues of vertebrates.
"As far as we know, it doesn't infect any other animal protein," Smith said. "So that's one of the most important restrictions on where it lives."
In amphibians, chytrid infects and damages the skin, which amphibians use to breathe and absorb water. Once the fungus takes hold, it causes a disease called chytridiomycosis, which is usually fatal.
"You can sometimes tell when a frog is infected," Smith said, "by the way it walks. It is slow and spraddles its legs, as though its skin is painful or chafed. When we grabbed frogs like those in South Africa and took samples, they were always heavily infected with the fungus," he said.
Unlike more familiar fungi such as mushrooms, which release spores that drift through the air, chytrids, among the earliest fungi to evolve, are aquatic and release flagellated zoospores that swim through the water.
"Laboratory studies suggest the zoospores can live independently only about a day or so. They're considered to be very fragile," Smith said. "They get expunged from the fungal cell inside the amphibian skin, they swim around for about a day, and if they don't infect something with keratin, they're no longer viable. That's what's generally thought.
"That's why we focused on the aquatic habitat," Smith said. "Animals may be able to move the fungus from one location to another, but it's not just drifting in the air. Our question was: If the aquatic habitat is key, why don't we find chytrid in every aquatic habitat?"
As a community and conservation ecologist, Smith suspected the answer couldn't be found by selectively studying the amphibians dying of chytrid. Scientists racing to save amphibian species from extinction have understandably tended to narrow their focus to the pathogen and its victims.
"It's the crisis of amphibians dying and going extinct that makes us focus so narrowly," Smith said.
But Smith has never seen any evidence that chytrid causes mortality in this part of Missouri, although it is one of many factors leading to the decline of hellbenders, a large salamander native to the Ozarks.
Because chytrid is an endemic disease in Missouri, Smith realized he could back up, slow down and study it as an ecologist. "That hasn't happened as often as it should," he said.
Journal Reference:
1. Alex Strauss, Kevin G. Smith. Why Does Amphibian Chytrid (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) Not Occur Everywhere? An Exploratory Study in Missouri Ponds. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e76035 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076035
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6) Burmese python trap: Will it work? - Federal wildlife officials will test a new trap designed to capture Burmese pythons.
By Jennifer Kay, Associated Press / September 26, 2013, Miami
Federal wildlife officials alarmed by an infestation of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades have tried radio tracking collars, a massive public hunt and even snake-sniffing dogs to control the invasive species. Now there's talk of snaring the elusive pythons in specially designed traps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture received a patent in August for a trap that resembles a long, thin cage with a net at one end for the live capture of large, heavy snakes.
Researchers say Burmese pythons regard the Everglades as an all-you-can-eat buffet, where native mammals are easy prey and the snakes have no natural predators. The population of Burmese pythons, which are native to India and other parts of Asia, likely developed from pets released into the wild, either intentionally or in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Wildlife officials are racing to control the python population before it undermines ongoing efforts to restore natural water flow through the Everglades. According to a study released last year, mammal sightings in the Everglades are down sharply in areas where pythons are known to live.
The Gainesville field station for the National Wildlife Research Center, which falls under the USDA, is preparing to test the trap in a natural enclosure that contains five pythons.
Over the coming months, the researchers will try baiting the traps with the scent of small mammals such as rats, and they will try camouflaging them as pipes or other small, covered spaces where pythons like to hide, said John Humphrey, a biologist at the research center. Future tests may use python pheromones as bait.
"There's still more to be learned, there's still more to be tested," Humphrey said. "This is just one of your tools that you have to put together with other things to get the problem solved."
The trap was developed to catch exotic snakes without ensnaring smaller, lighter native species, Humphrey said.
The 5-foot-long trap is made from galvanized steel wire with a tightly woven net secured to one end. Two separate triggers need to be tripped simultaneously for it to close, which should keep it from snapping shut on such native snakes as the eastern diamondback rattlesnake or the water moccasin.
"The largest native snakes are generally somewhat smaller than the youngest of the pythons," Humphrey said. "That was the impetus of the design."
The longest python ever caught in Florida was an 18-foot-8-inch specimen found in May beside a rural Miami-Dade County road.
Humphrey developed the trap in collaboration with Wisconsin-based Tomahawk Live Trap, which is working on a licensing agreement to sell the traps along with other snake-handling equipment such as tongs, hooks and secure bags.
"We don't expect to sell a lot of them; it's not an everybody thing, not like a chipmunk or a squirrel trap," said co-owner Jenny Smith. But she said it has potential for wildlife removal companies when they get calls about "a big snake."
It's not clear where exactly the traps would be deployed, or whether they would be effective in an area as vast as Florida's Everglades.
Everglades National Park alone encompasses 1.5 million acres, and all but roughly a hundred thousand acres of that is largely inaccessible swampland and sawgrass, vital breeding grounds for a variety of protected species.
It might not make sense, or even be possible, to place and monitor traps in hard-to-reach swamplands, said park spokeswoman Linda Friar.
Traps have been used in the park to collect pythons for research but not for population control, Friar said.
Most of the state and federal efforts aimed at pythons have focused on learning how the elusive snakes have adapted so well in the wild, and that learning process continues, she said.
"They're so difficult to track and find," Friar said. "What we do know is they've adapted. We don't know how many there are."
One of the challenges facing wildlife officials is that the tan, splotchy snakes are incredibly difficult to spot in the wild, even for seasoned hunters. Researchers say they'll fail to see a python they're tracking with a radio collar until they're practically standing on it.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows hunters with special permits to remove pythons and other exotic reptiles from some state lands. Earlier this year, a state-sanctioned hunt that attracted worldwide media attention. Roughly 1,600 amateur python hunters joined the permit holders for a month, netting a total of 68 snakes.
In an Auburn University experiment, specially trained dogs found more pythons than their human counterparts, but researchers also found that the dogs, much like humans, would falter the longer they worked in South Florida's often oppressive humidity.
State wildlife officials also try to catch pythons through "exotic pet amnesty days" where people can relinquish non-native species with no questions asked. They also urge residents to report encounters with pythons and other invasive species to a python hotline. Florida prohibits the possession or sale of pythons for use as pets, and federal law bans the importation and interstate sale of the species.
A prolonged cold snap has proven to be one of the better methods of python population control, killing off large numbers of the snakes in 2010. The population rebounded, though, because low temperatures aren't reliable in subtropical South Florida and because pythons reproduce quickly and in large numbers.
Other traps set for pythons in the past haven't been effective, but traps have been successfully used to capture other exotic species such as black-and-white tegu lizards, said conservation commission spokeswoman Carli Segelson.
"It may be something that if it doesn't work for the python, it may work for other species," she said.
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7) Native and non-native reptiles feeling the stress of Colorado floods
by Claire Martin Denver Post 9/28/13
As executive director of the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, Ann-Elizabeth Nash hears some odd stories, but the post-flood call that began "I've got this black and yellow lizard in our window well" topped most of them.
"I knew she was talking about a tiger salamander that was probably trying to get to higher ground and dropped into what was, for a tiger salamander, a pitfall trap," Nash said.
"We told her to leave it there, that it'd be fine. She said, 'Well, it's not just the one.' So she had four window wells, and one had 10 tiger salamanders, and the next one had eight plus a couple of toads. I was imagining tiger salamanders tromping up to her backyard: 'Please, give us dry land!'
The call was one of dozens that Nash has received since the September floods began along the Front Range, a volume that more than doubled the normal monthly traffic to Nash's Colorado Reptile Humane Society.
Some calls were from people who didn't know what to do about the strange snake or turtle that showed up in their yard, or on nearby roads. Others were from people begging her to take the exotic pet reptiles that weren't allowed in shelters or temporary housing.
Since flooding began, Nash has taken in 11 wild reptiles and amphibians native to Colorado, including common snapping turtles, Western painted turtles, tiger salamanders, a red-eared slider and a couple of bull snakes.
She's also welcomed 15 reptile flood evacuee pets, exotic species from residents' homes, including leopard geckos, box turtles.
And she's fielded calls about dozens more.
The floodwaters washed native reptiles from their winter hibernation sites, said Tina Jackson, species conservation coordinator for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
"We do see reptile and amphibian migrations. Both groups hibernate, and they may have to move between summer habitats and winter/hibernation sites," Jackson said. Floods can interfere with migration patterns.
And Jackson was unsurprised by the report of tiger salamanders in window wells, where they often take refuge in times of stress.
Though turbulent waters washed both reptiles and amphibians away from their home ranges, aquatic creatures "probably appreciate the extra water," Jackson said. She expects that native wildlife will either find a new appropriate habitat or make their way back upstream.
"A box turtle lives in the same place, an area the size of five to 10 football fields, for its entire life. They just don't move successfully. They walk to find something familiar, and get hit by cars," she said. "If you pick up a box turtle you find in Nebraska and move it to Colorado, it's highly likely to die."
The red-eared slider, another rescue that's not a Colorado native, may have washed out of a backyard pond or tank. If nobody claims the red-eared slider, it will be put up for adoption, like other non-native reptiles that arrive at Colorado Reptile Humane Society.
"We've already released the snapping turtles, because we have lakes and ponds we can legally put them into, thanks to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, now that the water is down far enough to get to a release site," Nash said.
"The flood delayed some of our other releases, so we really had some wildlife backed up," Nash said. "We can take in reptiles that are flood evacuees, but we won't be able to take in more surrendered reptiles until sometime next month."
Snakes on a floodplain
Colorado Reptile Humane Society is taking in reptiles whose owners have been evacuated due to flooding, along with displaced wild reptiles
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8) Specially trained dogs help researchers sniff out salamanders
9/23/13, By Chris Quintana, The New Mexican
Like most dogs, Sampson excels at finding poop, but he does so with a higher purpose.
He’s usually searching for the waste of endangered animals, the discovery of which allows researchers to learn more about the critters without disturbing the animals or their habitats, explains his handler, Julianne Ubigau.
And while Sampson has found scat from animals ranging from mice to moose, he and Ubigau — who are with Conservation Canines, a subdivision of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology — most recently have been in Northern New Mexico searching for the endangered Jemez Mountain salamander.
On a recent chilly morning in the Jemez Mountains near the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area outside Los Alamos, Sampson at first is a quiet dog. He’s not the type of creature that licks people or seeks a pat on the head. But when Ubigau puts him in his red working vest, the dog’s personality suddenly changes. Ubigau pulls out a red rubber ball, and Sampson barks for a moment before rushing into the thick forest. Ubigau follows closely behind, directing the dog to inspect a rotted log or to ignore others.
Sampson paws into the wet dirt when he tracks down a scent, and if the scent is strong, he sits down and waits for Ubigau. As she catches up, his tails starts wagging. After years of training, Sampson knows that Ubigau will toss the ball if he has found a good scent. Usually, two field researchers follow behind the dog and handler, inspecting the creature’s potential finds.
This time the scent is good, and Ubigau, who has worked with Conservation Canines as a handler since 2007, launches the red ball. Sampson leaps from his squatting position, bounds after the ball, scoops it up in his mouth and then drops the slobbery toy at Ubigau’s feet. Without wiping it off, she tosses the ball again and playtime continues until Ubigau redirects Sampson.
Last week’s run was merely an exercise, and Sampson didn’t track down any new salamanders. The population of the Jemez Mountain Salamander has declined rapidly in recent years thanks to a combination of wildfires and drought.
The amphibians are tiny — between 2 and 4 1/2 inches in length and less than an inch wide. The creature’s large eyes make up a quarter of its head. Brown skin helps the salamanders blend into their wooded surroundings, and, accordingly, makes them hard to find.
That’s part of the reason Conservation Canines was brought in, said Anne Bradley with The Nature Conservancy, one of the groups looking for the Jemez Mountain salamander.
Bradley said the amphibian’s habitat is rapidly shrinking because of recent wildfires. The goal, she said, is to find where they live to learn more about the secretive creatures.
Last year, crews found only one salamander. This year, they have managed to track down 13 of the critters since July. That increase is partially due to increased rains and accompanying humidity — ideal conditions for the salamanders to emerge from rotten logs or cavernous rocks.
Sampson has certainly helped this year’s expedition, too, but it should be noted Conservation Canines sent Sampson and another dog in 2012 as well.
Before he was searching for salamanders, Sampson was trained to find excrement from wolverines, lynx, moose and gray wolves, to name a few. The black Labrador mix also can find live animals, as he did when he tracked sea turtles’ nests off the coast of Alabama.
The working dog first joined Conservation Canines in 2008. When Sampson was only 4 years old, he was discovered at The Humane Society for Seattle/King County, where he had been passed over because his nearly indefatigable energy turned off many potential families. But that boundless desire to play was useful for Conservation Canines’ purposes, Ubigau said.
Ubigau said most dogs used by the program are Labrador mixes or cattle dogs — canines that could work for eight hours straight, if necessary. But the main criteria, she said, include high energy levels and singular focus on playing. Those traits translate to a dog willing to do what’s asked of it.
The training process, Ubigau said, is fairly simple. The dogs enter a field where there is wolverine excrement, and when the canine finds and sniffs the waste, a trainer immediately presents the dog with a ball to fetch. That process is repeated until the four-legged creature understands that finding the right scat equals playtime.
Now 9 years old, Sampson can’t work like he used to and is nearing retirement, Ubigau said. When he retires from field work, he’ll likely have a home with Ubigau. The handler explained that most, if not all, of the dogs that go through the Conservation Canines program are adopted by one of the many handlers, who have experience with high-energy dogs. Each handler usually has a favorite, and Ubigau’s is Sampson. Ubigau has already adopted another dog that retired from the program, a Jack Russell terrier named Casey.
With a job, most of these dogs end up doing great in the end,” Ubigau said.
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9) Woodland salamanders indicators of forest ecosystem recovery
Press Release USDA, 8/28/13, Arcata, CA.—Woodland salamanders are a viable indicator of forest ecosystem recovery, according to researchers from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
PSW Research Wildlife Biologist Dr. Hartwell Welsh and Garth Hodgson examined two species of woodland salamanders across four stages of tree development at Mill Creek—a disturbed old-growth redwood forest in northern California. They found that the numbers and body condition of two common species of salamander tracked closely with forest stand growth, development, and structural changes. Using salamander population numbers and physiological condition on adjacent, never harvested old-growth parkland to reference advancements along this developmental pathway, they demonstrated relationships between salamander counts and body condition and aspects of forest advancement including stand age, tree size, ambient moisture, canopy closure, and litter depth.
The case study established that when woodland salamanders are found in high abundance, it indicates a healthy forest, having undergone ecological advancement and ecosystem recovery.
There have been concerns about using indicator species as metrics of ecosystem conditions; however, amphibians are increasingly becoming accepted as researchers verify their applicability and usefulness. The woodland salamanders evaluated in Mill Creek were deemed credible due to their conservatism, trophic role, and high site fidelity, which tie them closely to conditions of place.
The findings of this case study are important because old-growth forests are quickly diminishing, but they provide crucial environmental services to society. According to the researchers, this type of forest is a unique carbon sink containing the most abundant land carbon stocks on the planet. Old-growth forests sequester carbon pollution and support the world's most diverse ecosystems.
Mill Creek is an old-growth forest located in Del Norte, Calif. in a geographically limited coastal redwood forest bioregion, which has seen extensive commercial logging for more than 100 years. It has recently been acquired by the state park system, and is intended to have its logged-over areas restored to primary forest. If restored, it can provide migration corridors for rare, absent, and native wildlife.
The full report can be found at: http://treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/43998
Contact: Michael Sullivan
mesullivan@fs.fed.us
510-559-6434
USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Research Station
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(George A. Middendorf III, Howard University)
Very well conceived!
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Turtles of the World by Franck Bonin, Bernard Devaux, Alain Dupre, translated by Peter C.H. Pritchard
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Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles Hardcover, Editor, Pamela T. Plotkin
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An excellent book that fulfills a real and substantive need in the areas of marine biology, vertebrate biology, and conservation biology. Pamela Plotkin has assembled the top experts and created a book that contains a remarkable series of chapters. Informative and engaging, it will be of value to both the general and specialist reader and is certainly a 'must read' for anyone interested in marine turtles.
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Extraordinary contribution to sea turtle literature. The value of this book lies in the fact that '…much of what we know about ridleys is summarized in the chapters herein…,' as stated by the editor, and I echo her hopes that this book will stimulate some much needed research on ridleys.
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This volume synthesizes all that is known about the common snapping turtle to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive resource on the species' evolution, physiology, behavior, and life history. Anthony C. Steyermark, Michael S. Finkler, Ronald J. Brooks, and a team of experts detail the systematics, energetics, growth patterns, sex determination, and population genetics of snapping turtles and devote special attention to the fossil record of the snapping turtle family Chelydridae.
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The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles, by Michael Watkins and Bo Beolems and Michael Grayson
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Beolens and co-authors have produced a great book that is fun to read. Notably, they have already published similar books on birds and mammals... and reportedly have a companion volume on amphibians in press. If they live long enough to work through the 30,000 species of fish, a future eponym dictionary of vertebrates may keep saving biologists from buying People magazine for years to come.
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The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles does precisely what it says on the box. It's a dictionary of names appended in various species of reptiles, contemporary and recently extinct alike, with a brief overview of the discoverer and the namesake (since one isn’t necessarily the other), plus a list of all that person's eponymous species... A remarkably fun book for dipping into or to skate through looking for notable names.
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This dictionary provides concise information on the 2,330 persons who have had reptiles named after them... An interesting, informative, and easy-to-read book.
Edmund D. Keiser, Jr. American Reference Books Annual
Should you buy it? If you're fascinated with the human dimensions of biodiversity, [yes]; if you're also a logophile, absolutely.
Tom Herman Canadian Herpetologist
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The Map Turtle and Sawback Atlas
Ecology, Evolution, Distribution, and Conservation
By Peter V. Lindeman
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Covering all facets of the biology of a little-known genus, Peter V. Lindeman’s lavishly illustrated Map Turtle and Sawback Atlas is both a scientific treatise and an engaging introduction to a striking group of turtles. Everything we know about these beautiful animals so far.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1) The response of a sleepy lizard social network to altered ecological conditions
2) Swiss customs seize rare frogs in taxi
3) Torrent Frogs Use Toes, Belly, Thighs to Hold Tight Under Waterfall-Like Conditions
4) Frogs that hear with their mouth
5) Missouri Ponds Provide Clue to Killer Frog Disease
6) Burmese python trap: Will it work? - Federal wildlife officials will test a new trap designed to capture Burmese pythons.
7) Native and non-native reptiles feeling the stress of Colorado floods
8) Specially trained dogs help researchers sniff out salamanders
9) Woodland salamanders indicators of forest ecosystem recovery
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Some Other Books on Sale-See below for more info and how to order.
Turtles, Frogs, Geckos: 3 Separate Books From The Animal Answer Guide Series: Q&A for the Curious Naturalist
Lizard Social Behavior
Patterns of Distribution of Amphibians: A Global Perspective
The Rise of Amphibians: 365 Million Years of Evolution
Turtles of the World
Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles
Biology of the Snapping Turtle ( Chelydra serpentina)
The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles
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1) The response of a sleepy lizard social network to altered ecological conditions
Animal Behaviour
Volume 86, Issue 4, October 2013, Pages 763–772
• Stephanie S. Godfreya, b, , , S.Godfrey@murdoch.edu.au
• Andrew Sihc,
• C. Michael Bulla
a School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
b School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
c Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, U.S.A.
Highlights
We compared sleepy lizard social networks across 3 ecologically varying years.
Lizard body condition, activity and home range use varied among years.
The number and strength of connections in the network were stable across years.
Reproductive associations were weakest in the driest year of the study.
The use of social networks to describe animal social structure is increasing, yet our understanding of how social networks respond to changing ecological conditions remains limited. Animal behaviour is often constrained by temporal or spatial variation in ecological conditions; how do behaviour and social organization respond to changing ecological conditions? We used a social network approach to ask this question in the pair-living sleepy lizard, Tiliqua rugosa. We attached GPS data loggers to lizards to record their movement, activity and social interactions during their activity period (October–December) in 2008–2010. The years varied substantially in ecological conditions, from hot and dry in 2008 to cool and wet in 2010. Our aim was not to suggest how individual climatic or ecological factors influence social organization, but to explore the stability of social structure over varying conditions. Lizards spent less time active and overlapped in home range area more with conspecifics in the driest year of the study (2008) than in subsequent years. Despite this variation in behaviour, the number and strength of connections in the social network were stable across years. Intrasexual associations were similar across years, but there was a lower incidence of intersexual associations in 2008 than in the other 2 years. Among male–female dyads, pairing intensity was lower in 2008, while for males, extrapair strength was higher in 2008. These results suggest that although the overall social network is tolerant to changes in ecological conditions, the nature of contacts within the network shifts in response to ecological variation.
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2) Swiss customs seize rare frogs in taxi
Yahoo News, 9/26/13
During a routine check at a border crossing, Swiss customs officers made an unexpected discovery: 35 brightly coloured rare frogs and a gecko hidden in the boot of a taxi.
The French taxi driver was alone in the vehicle when he was stopped on September 14 at a border crossing with Germany, and tried to smuggle the creatures into Switzerland without the required documentation, the Swiss customs service said in a statement on Thursday.
The tiny, brightly coloured Oophaga, Excidobates and Ranitomeya frogs and the dwarf gecko are all endangered species.
Packed into small, plastic boxes for the journey, the amphibians and the reptile were immediately seized and a criminal probe was launched against the driver, the customs office said.
The Frenchman, whose name was not given, risks fines of more than 2,000 Swiss francs ($A2,360), it added.
Importing animals of this type into Switzerland requires a permit from the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office and a certificate from the organisation that oversees the trade of endangered species, in addition to customs declarations.
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3) Torrent Frogs Use Toes, Belly, Thighs to Hold Tight Under Waterfall-Like Conditions
Sep. 25, 2013 — Torrent frogs use their toes, belly, and thighs to attach to rough, wet, and steep surfaces, according to results published September 25 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Thomas Endlein from the Centre for Cell Engineering at the University of Glasgow and colleagues from other institutions.
In a multipart study, the researchers compared the attachment abilities of two species: torrent frogs (Staurois guttatus) and tree frogs (Rhacophorus pardalis). They found that the torrent frog is better able to attach to extremely wet, steep, and rough surfaces due to its superior attachment abilities. Frog attachment to surfaces was measured under different conditions of roughness and fast-flowing water on a slowly rotating platform. On dry, smooth surfaces, both frog species attached to steep slopes equally well; however, on wet, rough surfaces, the torrent frogs attached significantly better than tree frogs.
To find out why this might be, researchers used imaging to visualize the attachment process and discovered that both frog species use their toes, belly, and thighs to adhere to the surface. However, the torrent frogs increased the use of their belly and thighs as the surface became steeper, managing to stay put until the platform was almost upside down. In contrast, tree frogs often lost the contact of their belly and thigh skin with the steeper platform and therefore detached earlier.
Moreover, using scanning electron microscopy to visualize the shape of the cells on the toe pads of both species, the authors found that the torrent frogs' were slightly elongated compared to those in the tree frogs. These cells create channels that facilitate the drainage of excess fluid underneath the pad, possibly providing a further advantage for holding on. Endlein expands, "Torrent frogs adhere to very wet and rough surfaces by attaching not only their specialised toe pads (like many tree frogs do) but also by using their belly and ventral thigh skin. In addition, torrent frogs exhibit elongated cells on their toe pads which might help to drain off excess water for close surface attachment."
Journal Reference:
1. Thomas Endlein, W. Jon P. Barnes, Diana S. Samuel, Niall A. Crawford, Ang Bee Biaw, Ulmar Grafe. Sticking under Wet Conditions: The Remarkable Attachment Abilities of the Torrent Frog, Staurois guttatus. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e73810 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073810
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4) Frogs that hear with their mouth
X-rays reveal a new hearing mechanism for animals without an ear
Australasian Science, 9/2/13, Gardiner's frogs from the Seychelles islands, one of the smallest frogs in the world, do not possess a middle ear with an eardrum yet can croak themselves, and hear other frogs. An international team of scientists using X-rays has now solved this mystery and established that these frogs are using their mouth cavity and tissue to transmit sound to their inner ears. The results are published in PNAS.
The team led by Renaud Boistel from CNRS and University of Poitiers, comprised also scientists from Institut Langevin of ESPCI ParisTech, the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique in Marseilles, the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of Evry (France), the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles, and the European Synchrotron ESRF in Grenoble.
The way sound is heard is common to many lineages of animals and appeared during the Triassic age (200-250 million years ago). Although the auditory systems of the four-legged animals have undergone many changes since, they have in common the middle ear with eardrum and ossicles, which emerged independently in the major lineages. On the other hand, some animals notably most frogs, do not possess an outer ear like humans, but a middle ear with an eardrum located directly on the surface of the head. Incoming sound waves make the eardrum vibrate, and the eardrum delivers these vibrations using the ossicles to the inner ear where hair cells translate them into electric signals sent to the brain. Is it possible to detect sound in the brain without a middle ear? The answer is no because 99.9% of a sound wave reaching an animal is reflected at the surface of its skin.
"However, we know of frog species that croak like other frogs but do no have tympanic middle ears to listen to each other. This seems to be a contradiction," says Renaud Boistel from the IPHEP of the University of Poitiers and CNRS. "These small animals, Gardiner's frogs, have been living isolated in the rainforest of the Seychelles for 47 to 65 million years, since these islands split away from the main continent. If they can hear, their auditory system must be a survivor of life forms on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana."
To establish whether these frogs actually use sound for communicate with each other, the scientists set up loudspeakers in their natural habitat and broadcast pre-recorded frog songs. This caused males present in the rainforest to answer, proving that they were able to hear the sound from the loudspeakers.
The next step was to identify the mechanism by which these seemingly deaf frogs were able to hear sound. Various mechanisms have been proposed: an extra-tympanic pathway through the lungs, muscles which in frogs connect the pectoral girdle to the region of the inner ear, or bone conduction. "Whether body tissue will transport sound or not depends on its biomechanical properties. With X-ray imaging techniques here at the ESRF, we could establish that neither the pulmonary system nor the muscles of these frogs contribute significantly to the transmission of sound to the inner ears", says Peter Cloetens, a scientist at the ESRF who took part in the study. "As these animals are tiny, just one centimetre long, we needed X-ray images of the soft tissue and the bony parts with micrometric resolution to determine which body parts contribute to sound propagation."
Numerical simulations helped to investigate the third hypothesis, that the sound was received through the frog's heads. These simulations confirmed that the mouth acts as a resonator, or amplifier, for the frequencies emitted by this species. Synchrotron X-ray imaging on different species showed that the transmission of the sound from the oral cavity to the inner ear has been optimized by two evolutionary adaptations: a reduced thickness of the tissue between the mouth and the inner ear and a smaller number of tissue layers between the mouth and the inner ear. "The combination of a mouth cavity and bone conduction allows Gardiner's frogs to perceive sound effectively without use of a tympanic middle ear", concludes Renaud Boistel.
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5) Missouri Ponds Provide Clue to Killer Frog Disease
Sep. 25, 2013 — The skin fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), also known as amphibian chytrid, first made its presence felt in 1993 when dead and dying frogs began turning up in Queensland, Australia. Since then it has sickened and killed frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians worldwide, driving hundreds of species to extinction.
As a postdoctoral researcher Kevin Smith studied Bd in South Africa, home to the African clawed frog, a suspected vector for the fungus. When he took a position at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is now interim director of the Tyson Research Center and adjunct professor of biology, he worked on other problems.
But whenever he visited a pond, he collected tadpoles and checked their mouth parts (often a fungal hot spot) under the microscope, just out of curiosity.
So Smith recruited a team of students to study the ecosystems of 29 ponds in east-central Missouri. The team assayed larval amphibians for chytrid, collected physical and chemical data, and identified amphibian, macroinvertebrate and zooplankton species living in the ponds.
"I was half expecting it to be just an absolute mess, that there would be no distinguishing characteristic about ponds that have chytrid or ponds that don't," he said. "But instead, we found that the ponds that had chytrid were consistently more similar to one another than the ponds that didn't have chytrid in many different measures."
"That's a very powerful finding," he said. "The thinking had been that chytrid required keratin, appropriate temperatures and water -- and that was it. That's what we were stuck with. Now we know that there must be additional constraints because some ponds that meet these criteria don't harbor the fungus."
A statistical technique for ferreting out causal relationships suggested that this pattern was an indirect effect mediated by the ponds' invertebrate communities.
"They may be alternative hosts," Smith said. "That would be the most parsimonious explanation." But they might also be reservoirs (sites where the fungus can survive when there is no available host).
"The presence or absence of alternative hosts or reservoirs has a huge effect on the dynamics of the disease, and ultimately on the fate of the amphibians it attacks. If there are reservoirs we need to know about them, because otherwise it will be impossible to interrupt the chain of transmission," he said.
More evidence has since accumulated against the suspect group that fell out of the statistics of the pond study.
One group, looking for a model organism that could be used to study chytrid, showed that it can infect and kill the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Another team reported that crayfish are able to transmit chytrid, which infects the lining of their gastrointestinal tracts.
"Focusing only on amphibians to understand chytrid is like focusing only on people to understand Lyme disease," Smith said. "In the case of Lyme disease, we know that mice matter, that deer matter, that oak trees matter. Many different factors lead to there being a lot of Lyme in some cases and not others," Smith said.
Smith hopes that research in areas where chytrid is endemic may be able to help amphibians in areas where it is epidemic. The only alternative so far is the Amphibian Ark, a global effort to maintain threatened amphibians in captivity until they can be "secured in the wild."
He found the fungus in about a third of the ponds whose tadpoles he checked. The obvious question was why only a third? Why didn't it occur in all amphibian populations in a region where it is found?
The amphibians and the fungus have reached an evolutionary truce in Missouri, where the chytrid is endemic rather than epidemic. Because there was no pressure to rescue an amphibian population, Smith had the time and the opportunity to look more broadly and to study the entire pond ecosystem.
Together with then-undergraduate student Alex Strauss, Smith collected physical and chemical data and surveyed the species living in 29 ponds in east-central Missouri. The results of this study are published in the Sept. 25 edition of PLOS ONE.
Somewhat to Smith's surprise, it was statistically possible to distinguish infected from non-infected ponds, a finding he likens to being able to predict that influenza will circulate in some cities but not others.
"We don't know exactly what the key factors are but just knowing that not every pond appears to be suitable for chytrid in a given year is a very big step," he said.
The study also suggested that patterns of Bd infection might be an indirect effect of variations in invertebrate communities. What this meant was unclear, since chytrid was thought to be an amphibian specialist.
But while the pond study was underway other researchers announced that crayfish and nematodes can be infected with chytrid, raising the possibility that invertebrates act as alternative hosts or biological reservoirs for the fungus.
"Alternative hosts and reservoirs have been a key missing piece in our understanding of chytrid epidemiology," Smith said. The fungus, like any pathogen, cannot be effectively controlled unless all its hiding places are known.
Chytrid, or more properly amphibian chytrid, since there are about 1,000 species of fungus in the class Chytridiomycetes, specializes on keratin, a structural protein found in the skin, hair, nails and similar tissues of vertebrates.
"As far as we know, it doesn't infect any other animal protein," Smith said. "So that's one of the most important restrictions on where it lives."
In amphibians, chytrid infects and damages the skin, which amphibians use to breathe and absorb water. Once the fungus takes hold, it causes a disease called chytridiomycosis, which is usually fatal.
"You can sometimes tell when a frog is infected," Smith said, "by the way it walks. It is slow and spraddles its legs, as though its skin is painful or chafed. When we grabbed frogs like those in South Africa and took samples, they were always heavily infected with the fungus," he said.
Unlike more familiar fungi such as mushrooms, which release spores that drift through the air, chytrids, among the earliest fungi to evolve, are aquatic and release flagellated zoospores that swim through the water.
"Laboratory studies suggest the zoospores can live independently only about a day or so. They're considered to be very fragile," Smith said. "They get expunged from the fungal cell inside the amphibian skin, they swim around for about a day, and if they don't infect something with keratin, they're no longer viable. That's what's generally thought.
"That's why we focused on the aquatic habitat," Smith said. "Animals may be able to move the fungus from one location to another, but it's not just drifting in the air. Our question was: If the aquatic habitat is key, why don't we find chytrid in every aquatic habitat?"
As a community and conservation ecologist, Smith suspected the answer couldn't be found by selectively studying the amphibians dying of chytrid. Scientists racing to save amphibian species from extinction have understandably tended to narrow their focus to the pathogen and its victims.
"It's the crisis of amphibians dying and going extinct that makes us focus so narrowly," Smith said.
But Smith has never seen any evidence that chytrid causes mortality in this part of Missouri, although it is one of many factors leading to the decline of hellbenders, a large salamander native to the Ozarks.
Because chytrid is an endemic disease in Missouri, Smith realized he could back up, slow down and study it as an ecologist. "That hasn't happened as often as it should," he said.
Journal Reference:
1. Alex Strauss, Kevin G. Smith. Why Does Amphibian Chytrid (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) Not Occur Everywhere? An Exploratory Study in Missouri Ponds. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e76035 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076035
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6) Burmese python trap: Will it work? - Federal wildlife officials will test a new trap designed to capture Burmese pythons.
By Jennifer Kay, Associated Press / September 26, 2013, Miami
Federal wildlife officials alarmed by an infestation of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades have tried radio tracking collars, a massive public hunt and even snake-sniffing dogs to control the invasive species. Now there's talk of snaring the elusive pythons in specially designed traps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture received a patent in August for a trap that resembles a long, thin cage with a net at one end for the live capture of large, heavy snakes.
Researchers say Burmese pythons regard the Everglades as an all-you-can-eat buffet, where native mammals are easy prey and the snakes have no natural predators. The population of Burmese pythons, which are native to India and other parts of Asia, likely developed from pets released into the wild, either intentionally or in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Wildlife officials are racing to control the python population before it undermines ongoing efforts to restore natural water flow through the Everglades. According to a study released last year, mammal sightings in the Everglades are down sharply in areas where pythons are known to live.
The Gainesville field station for the National Wildlife Research Center, which falls under the USDA, is preparing to test the trap in a natural enclosure that contains five pythons.
Over the coming months, the researchers will try baiting the traps with the scent of small mammals such as rats, and they will try camouflaging them as pipes or other small, covered spaces where pythons like to hide, said John Humphrey, a biologist at the research center. Future tests may use python pheromones as bait.
"There's still more to be learned, there's still more to be tested," Humphrey said. "This is just one of your tools that you have to put together with other things to get the problem solved."
The trap was developed to catch exotic snakes without ensnaring smaller, lighter native species, Humphrey said.
The 5-foot-long trap is made from galvanized steel wire with a tightly woven net secured to one end. Two separate triggers need to be tripped simultaneously for it to close, which should keep it from snapping shut on such native snakes as the eastern diamondback rattlesnake or the water moccasin.
"The largest native snakes are generally somewhat smaller than the youngest of the pythons," Humphrey said. "That was the impetus of the design."
The longest python ever caught in Florida was an 18-foot-8-inch specimen found in May beside a rural Miami-Dade County road.
Humphrey developed the trap in collaboration with Wisconsin-based Tomahawk Live Trap, which is working on a licensing agreement to sell the traps along with other snake-handling equipment such as tongs, hooks and secure bags.
"We don't expect to sell a lot of them; it's not an everybody thing, not like a chipmunk or a squirrel trap," said co-owner Jenny Smith. But she said it has potential for wildlife removal companies when they get calls about "a big snake."
It's not clear where exactly the traps would be deployed, or whether they would be effective in an area as vast as Florida's Everglades.
Everglades National Park alone encompasses 1.5 million acres, and all but roughly a hundred thousand acres of that is largely inaccessible swampland and sawgrass, vital breeding grounds for a variety of protected species.
It might not make sense, or even be possible, to place and monitor traps in hard-to-reach swamplands, said park spokeswoman Linda Friar.
Traps have been used in the park to collect pythons for research but not for population control, Friar said.
Most of the state and federal efforts aimed at pythons have focused on learning how the elusive snakes have adapted so well in the wild, and that learning process continues, she said.
"They're so difficult to track and find," Friar said. "What we do know is they've adapted. We don't know how many there are."
One of the challenges facing wildlife officials is that the tan, splotchy snakes are incredibly difficult to spot in the wild, even for seasoned hunters. Researchers say they'll fail to see a python they're tracking with a radio collar until they're practically standing on it.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows hunters with special permits to remove pythons and other exotic reptiles from some state lands. Earlier this year, a state-sanctioned hunt that attracted worldwide media attention. Roughly 1,600 amateur python hunters joined the permit holders for a month, netting a total of 68 snakes.
In an Auburn University experiment, specially trained dogs found more pythons than their human counterparts, but researchers also found that the dogs, much like humans, would falter the longer they worked in South Florida's often oppressive humidity.
State wildlife officials also try to catch pythons through "exotic pet amnesty days" where people can relinquish non-native species with no questions asked. They also urge residents to report encounters with pythons and other invasive species to a python hotline. Florida prohibits the possession or sale of pythons for use as pets, and federal law bans the importation and interstate sale of the species.
A prolonged cold snap has proven to be one of the better methods of python population control, killing off large numbers of the snakes in 2010. The population rebounded, though, because low temperatures aren't reliable in subtropical South Florida and because pythons reproduce quickly and in large numbers.
Other traps set for pythons in the past haven't been effective, but traps have been successfully used to capture other exotic species such as black-and-white tegu lizards, said conservation commission spokeswoman Carli Segelson.
"It may be something that if it doesn't work for the python, it may work for other species," she said.
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7) Native and non-native reptiles feeling the stress of Colorado floods
by Claire Martin Denver Post 9/28/13
As executive director of the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, Ann-Elizabeth Nash hears some odd stories, but the post-flood call that began "I've got this black and yellow lizard in our window well" topped most of them.
"I knew she was talking about a tiger salamander that was probably trying to get to higher ground and dropped into what was, for a tiger salamander, a pitfall trap," Nash said.
"We told her to leave it there, that it'd be fine. She said, 'Well, it's not just the one.' So she had four window wells, and one had 10 tiger salamanders, and the next one had eight plus a couple of toads. I was imagining tiger salamanders tromping up to her backyard: 'Please, give us dry land!'
The call was one of dozens that Nash has received since the September floods began along the Front Range, a volume that more than doubled the normal monthly traffic to Nash's Colorado Reptile Humane Society.
Some calls were from people who didn't know what to do about the strange snake or turtle that showed up in their yard, or on nearby roads. Others were from people begging her to take the exotic pet reptiles that weren't allowed in shelters or temporary housing.
Since flooding began, Nash has taken in 11 wild reptiles and amphibians native to Colorado, including common snapping turtles, Western painted turtles, tiger salamanders, a red-eared slider and a couple of bull snakes.
She's also welcomed 15 reptile flood evacuee pets, exotic species from residents' homes, including leopard geckos, box turtles.
And she's fielded calls about dozens more.
The floodwaters washed native reptiles from their winter hibernation sites, said Tina Jackson, species conservation coordinator for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
"We do see reptile and amphibian migrations. Both groups hibernate, and they may have to move between summer habitats and winter/hibernation sites," Jackson said. Floods can interfere with migration patterns.
And Jackson was unsurprised by the report of tiger salamanders in window wells, where they often take refuge in times of stress.
Though turbulent waters washed both reptiles and amphibians away from their home ranges, aquatic creatures "probably appreciate the extra water," Jackson said. She expects that native wildlife will either find a new appropriate habitat or make their way back upstream.
"A box turtle lives in the same place, an area the size of five to 10 football fields, for its entire life. They just don't move successfully. They walk to find something familiar, and get hit by cars," she said. "If you pick up a box turtle you find in Nebraska and move it to Colorado, it's highly likely to die."
The red-eared slider, another rescue that's not a Colorado native, may have washed out of a backyard pond or tank. If nobody claims the red-eared slider, it will be put up for adoption, like other non-native reptiles that arrive at Colorado Reptile Humane Society.
"We've already released the snapping turtles, because we have lakes and ponds we can legally put them into, thanks to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, now that the water is down far enough to get to a release site," Nash said.
"The flood delayed some of our other releases, so we really had some wildlife backed up," Nash said. "We can take in reptiles that are flood evacuees, but we won't be able to take in more surrendered reptiles until sometime next month."
Snakes on a floodplain
Colorado Reptile Humane Society is taking in reptiles whose owners have been evacuated due to flooding, along with displaced wild reptiles
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8) Specially trained dogs help researchers sniff out salamanders
9/23/13, By Chris Quintana, The New Mexican
Like most dogs, Sampson excels at finding poop, but he does so with a higher purpose.
He’s usually searching for the waste of endangered animals, the discovery of which allows researchers to learn more about the critters without disturbing the animals or their habitats, explains his handler, Julianne Ubigau.
And while Sampson has found scat from animals ranging from mice to moose, he and Ubigau — who are with Conservation Canines, a subdivision of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology — most recently have been in Northern New Mexico searching for the endangered Jemez Mountain salamander.
On a recent chilly morning in the Jemez Mountains near the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area outside Los Alamos, Sampson at first is a quiet dog. He’s not the type of creature that licks people or seeks a pat on the head. But when Ubigau puts him in his red working vest, the dog’s personality suddenly changes. Ubigau pulls out a red rubber ball, and Sampson barks for a moment before rushing into the thick forest. Ubigau follows closely behind, directing the dog to inspect a rotted log or to ignore others.
Sampson paws into the wet dirt when he tracks down a scent, and if the scent is strong, he sits down and waits for Ubigau. As she catches up, his tails starts wagging. After years of training, Sampson knows that Ubigau will toss the ball if he has found a good scent. Usually, two field researchers follow behind the dog and handler, inspecting the creature’s potential finds.
This time the scent is good, and Ubigau, who has worked with Conservation Canines as a handler since 2007, launches the red ball. Sampson leaps from his squatting position, bounds after the ball, scoops it up in his mouth and then drops the slobbery toy at Ubigau’s feet. Without wiping it off, she tosses the ball again and playtime continues until Ubigau redirects Sampson.
Last week’s run was merely an exercise, and Sampson didn’t track down any new salamanders. The population of the Jemez Mountain Salamander has declined rapidly in recent years thanks to a combination of wildfires and drought.
The amphibians are tiny — between 2 and 4 1/2 inches in length and less than an inch wide. The creature’s large eyes make up a quarter of its head. Brown skin helps the salamanders blend into their wooded surroundings, and, accordingly, makes them hard to find.
That’s part of the reason Conservation Canines was brought in, said Anne Bradley with The Nature Conservancy, one of the groups looking for the Jemez Mountain salamander.
Bradley said the amphibian’s habitat is rapidly shrinking because of recent wildfires. The goal, she said, is to find where they live to learn more about the secretive creatures.
Last year, crews found only one salamander. This year, they have managed to track down 13 of the critters since July. That increase is partially due to increased rains and accompanying humidity — ideal conditions for the salamanders to emerge from rotten logs or cavernous rocks.
Sampson has certainly helped this year’s expedition, too, but it should be noted Conservation Canines sent Sampson and another dog in 2012 as well.
Before he was searching for salamanders, Sampson was trained to find excrement from wolverines, lynx, moose and gray wolves, to name a few. The black Labrador mix also can find live animals, as he did when he tracked sea turtles’ nests off the coast of Alabama.
The working dog first joined Conservation Canines in 2008. When Sampson was only 4 years old, he was discovered at The Humane Society for Seattle/King County, where he had been passed over because his nearly indefatigable energy turned off many potential families. But that boundless desire to play was useful for Conservation Canines’ purposes, Ubigau said.
Ubigau said most dogs used by the program are Labrador mixes or cattle dogs — canines that could work for eight hours straight, if necessary. But the main criteria, she said, include high energy levels and singular focus on playing. Those traits translate to a dog willing to do what’s asked of it.
The training process, Ubigau said, is fairly simple. The dogs enter a field where there is wolverine excrement, and when the canine finds and sniffs the waste, a trainer immediately presents the dog with a ball to fetch. That process is repeated until the four-legged creature understands that finding the right scat equals playtime.
Now 9 years old, Sampson can’t work like he used to and is nearing retirement, Ubigau said. When he retires from field work, he’ll likely have a home with Ubigau. The handler explained that most, if not all, of the dogs that go through the Conservation Canines program are adopted by one of the many handlers, who have experience with high-energy dogs. Each handler usually has a favorite, and Ubigau’s is Sampson. Ubigau has already adopted another dog that retired from the program, a Jack Russell terrier named Casey.
With a job, most of these dogs end up doing great in the end,” Ubigau said.
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9) Woodland salamanders indicators of forest ecosystem recovery
Press Release USDA, 8/28/13, Arcata, CA.—Woodland salamanders are a viable indicator of forest ecosystem recovery, according to researchers from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
PSW Research Wildlife Biologist Dr. Hartwell Welsh and Garth Hodgson examined two species of woodland salamanders across four stages of tree development at Mill Creek—a disturbed old-growth redwood forest in northern California. They found that the numbers and body condition of two common species of salamander tracked closely with forest stand growth, development, and structural changes. Using salamander population numbers and physiological condition on adjacent, never harvested old-growth parkland to reference advancements along this developmental pathway, they demonstrated relationships between salamander counts and body condition and aspects of forest advancement including stand age, tree size, ambient moisture, canopy closure, and litter depth.
The case study established that when woodland salamanders are found in high abundance, it indicates a healthy forest, having undergone ecological advancement and ecosystem recovery.
There have been concerns about using indicator species as metrics of ecosystem conditions; however, amphibians are increasingly becoming accepted as researchers verify their applicability and usefulness. The woodland salamanders evaluated in Mill Creek were deemed credible due to their conservatism, trophic role, and high site fidelity, which tie them closely to conditions of place.
The findings of this case study are important because old-growth forests are quickly diminishing, but they provide crucial environmental services to society. According to the researchers, this type of forest is a unique carbon sink containing the most abundant land carbon stocks on the planet. Old-growth forests sequester carbon pollution and support the world's most diverse ecosystems.
Mill Creek is an old-growth forest located in Del Norte, Calif. in a geographically limited coastal redwood forest bioregion, which has seen extensive commercial logging for more than 100 years. It has recently been acquired by the state park system, and is intended to have its logged-over areas restored to primary forest. If restored, it can provide migration corridors for rare, absent, and native wildlife.
The full report can be found at: http://treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/43998
Contact: Michael Sullivan
mesullivan@fs.fed.us
510-559-6434
USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Research Station
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TO ORDER OR MAKE A DONATION:
Email us first at asalzberg@herpdigest.org for S&H fees for all overseas orders. (And yes this includes Canada)
1) Send a check to Herpdigest/Allen Salzberg/67-87 Booth Street -5B/Forest Hills, NY 11375. Make the check out to Herpdigest.
2) By Paypal - our account is asalzberg@herpdigest.org( If you are not a member of Paypal you can still use it with your credit card. Email us at asalzberg@herpdigest.org that you have placed an order at Paypal.
We no longer accept credit or debit cards. But you can still use them on Paypal