Latest Frog Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Though most of the over 6,000 species of frogs lay their eggs in water, many tropical frogs must lay their eggs out of water to protect them from aquatic predators, such as tadpoles and fish. The problem with this is that it increases the risk of the eggs drying out. A post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Justin Touchon, recently discovered that climate change in Panama may be altering the course of...
In the battle for survival, the impact of climate change may tip the balance against Australia’s dwindling urban frog populations. “Who’d be a frog in the suburbs?” asks conservation biologist Joab Wilson from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) at RMIT. “Not only do they have to contend with habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, now there’s climate change, too. They really are stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Given that frogs...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Climate change could cause parasites such as tapeworms to become more infectious or malignant, researchers from Oakland University and the University of South Florida claim in a new study gauging the impact of temperature swings on frogs' fungal infection rates. The research, which was published in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that tiny parasitic organisms likely have an easier time adapting to...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Critically endangered frogs rescued from possible extinction at the hands of a deadly fungus have successfully bred for the first time at the London Zoo, various media outlets reported Sunday. According to Telegraph Science Correspondent Richard Gray, the mountain chicken frogs had been rescued from the island of Montserrat, where they had been threatened by the spread of the Chytrid fungus. Chytridiomycosis, a disease associated...
TORONTO, July 24, 2012 /CNW/ - Alacer Gold Corp. ("Alacer" or the "Company") [TSX: ASR and ASX: AQG] is pleased to announce second quarter 2012 mine production results for its operations in Turkey and Australia. Second quarter 2012 financial statements and the related management's discussion and analysis are planned to be released on August 14, 2012 (North America) and August 15, 2012 (Australia). Second Quarter 2012 Highlights -- Second quarter gold production...
Michael Harper for redOrbit.com Here’s one for the “weird” column... Horse trainers have been allegedly juicing up their horses with a performance-enhancing drug with an interesting origin: a frog’s back. As for how the connection was made between horse racing and frog jumping, the world may never know. According to the New York Times, racing regulators had been hearing reports about this kind of activity happening in darkened stables, but after months of post-race...
A Yale graduate student has developed a novel means for charting the history of a pathogen deadly to amphibians worldwide. Katy Richards-Hrdlicka, a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, examined 164 preserved amphibians for the presence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, an infectious pathogen driving many species to extinction. The pathogen is found on every continent inhabited by amphibians and in more than 200 species. Bd causes...
A new bright yellow frog species has been found in the mountains of western Panama. The frog belongs to a species-rich group of frogs, the so called rainfrogs that lack a tadpole stage, but develop directly as little frogs inside the egg. The frog, that measures less than 2 cm, was discovered by Andreas Hertz and his colleagues, who are reptile and amphibian specialists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main; Germany. They discovered it in 2010 during several field...
Increases in the diversity of parasites that attack amphibians cause a decrease in the infection success rate of virulent parasites, including one that causes malformed limbs and premature death, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. According to CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Pieter Johnson, scientists are concerned about how changes in biodiversity affect the risk of infectious diseases in humans and wildlife. Charting the relationships between parasites and amphibians is...
Tiger snakes in Australia are of varied size, with some isolated island populations being twice the size of those on the mainland. New research conducted by Fabien Aubret of La Station d'Ecologie Experimentale du CNRS à Moulis, published in “The American Naturalist,” theorizes that the mainland snakes eat mainly frogs and always have. When sea level rose after that last Ice Age, some tiger snakes were stranded on islands where frogs could not survive because of dry conditions. These...
Latest Frog Reference Libraries
The Spanish painted frog is found in Spain in and around rivers, swamps, freshwater marshes, meadows, and pastures. This species thrives where there are limestone or gypsum soils at sea level up to 6,500 feet in elevation. The Spanish painted frog is a medium-sized frog that has a dark colored body with spots or stripes. The belly of this species is pale white or yellow. The skin is smooth with two lines of skin from behind the eyes running the length of the body. These lines are glands...
The Iberian midwife toad is found around the Iberian Peninsula in southern and eastern Portugal, and also in western and central Spain. The elevation range of this species is between 300 - 4,265 feet, but it is typically found around 2,000 feet. The Iberian midwife toad prefers dry habitats in meadows and open forests with sandy soil that grow vegetation adapted for dry regions. However, this toad relies on streams and pools for the development of the tadpoles. The Iberian midwife toad is...
Frogspawn, (Euphyllia divisa), is a species of stony coral native to the Indo-Pacific islands. The related coral E. paradivisa is sometimes misidentified as frogspawn leading to some confusion. E. divisa has a corallite skeleton with a flabello-meandroid (continuous skeletal) “wall” structure, whereas E. paradivisa has a tree-like branching structure with separate corallites. Frogspawn is commonly used in marine aquariums.
Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon, although there have been occurrences reported from many countries throughout history. It is believed that this phenomenon occurs at least occasionally when strong winds that are traveling over water pick up live debris (fish, frogs, etc.) and carry them up to several miles depositing them over land. Though this is one theory, it has never been witnessed or significantly tested. Animals that are most likely to drop from the sky during a...
The Purple Frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis) is a species of frog belonging to the family Sooglossidae. It is found in the Western Ghats in India. It is also known as the Pignose Frog. It is a fairly new recognized species as it was discovered in 2003. However it was well known to the local people before this and several earlier specimens had been ignored. It is a unique species for its geographic region. The Purple Frog looks like a typical frog. It has a squat body, somewhat rounded...
