A groundbreaking tinker frog breeding program in Australia seeks to save the species from extinction due to chytrid.

From News 7 Australia:

Two of the six species of tinker frog have already been wiped out, and researchers believe the lethal amphibian Chytrid fungus is to blame.

The one- to two-centimetre-long frog, which is native only to Queensland rainforests, gets its name from its unique call, according to Professor Jean-Marc Hero from Griffith University.

"The thing that really makes them stand out is their tinker, the sound they make is like the tinker of a glass jar with a metal pen or something," he said.

Professor Hero says a new program on the Gold Coast has managed to breed the tinker frog for the first time.

"There are only six species - they are an ancient Gondwana group - and at least three of those are already gone," he said.

"We are looking to recover and support the species that are remaining."

Read more...

If a first responder is on the scene of an accident or injury, and there's a loose reptile present, or the injured person was bitten by one, will they know what to do? They will if they've been taught the basics by an expert.

That's exactly the program being offered in one Canadian community.

From Simcoe.com:

Andre Ngo, director of research and curriculum at Reptilia, a Vaughan-based reptile zoo, gave an informative presentation to almost 25 police, firefighters and bylaw officers in Stayner Friday afternoon.

“It was an excellent training opportunity for us,” Clearview fire chief Colin Shewell said. “We got some real insight in terms of what to do when we encounter a reptile or are dealing with someone harmed by one.”

Huronia West OPP officers, Clearview firefighters, representatives from Clearview bylaw and firefighters from Springwater, Adjala-Tosorontio, Mulmur/Melancthon, Blue Mountains and Oro-Medonte attended the training session, held at the Joint Emergency Services Facility on Highway 26.

“My goal with you is to teach you how to secure a scene and stay safe,” Ngo said.

He started off by reviewing the major groups of reptiles and identified commonly encountered species. He also talked about safe handling practices.

Read more...

Photo: Simcoe.com

Timothy N. W. Jackson

Australia is world famous for its venomous critters, including its many highly venomous snakes.

The snake that holds the popular title of “world’s most venomous” is the inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus), an inhabitant of Australia’s arid interior. Astonishingly, a single bite from an inland taipan is capable of delivering enough venom to kill 250,000 lab mice.

The venom of the inland taipan has attracted considerable research interest and the toxins responsible for its extreme toxicity have been identified. Effective antivenom also exists for the treatment of bites.

What we don’t know, though, is why the inland taipan needs such toxic venom. We know almost nothing about the evolutionary selection pressures that have refined and enhanced the toxins present in the venom of this iconic species of snake.

Snakes vs humans

Historically, the focus of snake venom research worldwide has been anthropocentric – examining the impact the venom has for humans. Large species of venomous snake, those that are known to be potentially dangerous to humans, have received the lion’s share of attention.

Most attention has been given to the development of antivenom and to studying the building blocks of toxic proteins found in snake venoms. This has allowed us to learn more about human physiology and to search for compounds that may be useful in drug design, such as the toxin from the venom of a pit viper from which the blood pressure medication Captopril was developed.

These are important goals for venom research, but the result of this bias toward human interest is that we still know very little about the ways in which snakes use their venom in nature. We also do not know how diet influences its composition – the ecology of venom is an almost completely neglected area of research.

As Eastern kingsnake numbers in the southeastern U.S. drop, copperhead populations climb, according to a new study published in the journal Herpetologica.



From the Augusta Chronicle:

The non-venomous kingsnakes, which grow to more than 5-feet long, are so-named because they have a natural immunity to pit-viper venom, which allows them to prey on other snakes. They eat copperheads, a heavy-bodied venomous snake that can grow to a little more than 3-feet long.

From 377 traps deployed in an array of habitats, the authors recorded captures of 299 kingsnakes and 2,012 copperheads. Fort Stewart was one of the study sites in Georgia, along with the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway in the southwest corner of the state. The data indicates that declines in the kingsnake populations coincide with increases in the copperhead populations. Why that happens is open to interpretation.

Read more...

Photo: kingsnake.com user foxturtle

Check out "Chameleon," a video submitted by kingsnake.com user variuss11.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!

Baby sea turtles, like kids everywhere, don't always do what we expect them to do. University of Central Florida researcher Kate Mansfield and her team found a way to keep an eye on their movements -- and what they discovered surprised them.

From LiveScience.com:

Marine biologists track seagoing creatures, including adult loggerheads, with satellite tags that transmit information such as location, depth and temperature. But hatchlings are too small to tag — affix a tag with heavy batteries to these turtles, and they'll sink, Mansfield said.

Advances in tag technology have started to change all that. New tags are smaller and solar-powered (no heavy batteries needed), Mansfield said. They're still too large to affix to a newborn loggerhead, but they fit on young turtles. Mansfield and her colleagues lab-reared 17 loggerhead turtles to the age of 3.5 to 9 months, waiting until the turtles had reached between 4 inches and 7 inches (11 to 18 cm) in length before tagging them and releasing them into the Atlantic Ocean.

The long-standing expectation was that baby turtles hatch off the East Coast of the United States, launch into the Gulf Stream that carries them north up the coast and then ride into the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. This system of currents takes the turtles past the Azores off the coast of Western Europe and down the coast of Africa, before the animals pop back out on the East Coast again.

While the turtles do use the Gulf Stream and the Gyre, they don't always complete this ring around the Atlantic, the researchers report today (March 4) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In fact, the turtles completed quite diverse journeys; they traveled clockwise, but on their own, individual paths. Some even dropped out of the Gyre into the still waters within that circular current, known as the Sargasso Sea. The Sea gets its name, in part, from the floating Sargassum that gathers there.

Read the full story here...

Photo: Jim Abernethy/LiveScience.com

Humans battle over the dinner check, but in Australia, a python and a crocodile battled over which one of them would be dinner. Ctizen journalist Tiffany Corlis was on the scene and caught it on her camera.



From BBC News:

"It was amazing," she told the BBC. "We saw the snake fighting with the crocodile - it would roll the crocodile around to get a better grip, and coil its body around the crocodile's legs to hold it tight."

"The fight began in the water - the crocodile was trying to hold its head out of the water at one time, and the snake was constricting it."

"After the crocodile had died, the snake uncoiled itself, came around to the front, and started to eat the crocodile, face-first," she added.

Ms Corlis said it appeared to take the snake around 15 minutes to eat the crocodile.

The snake was "definitely very full," when it finished, she said. "I don't know where it went after that - we all left, thinking we didn't want to stick around!"

Read the full story, and see the rest of her photos, here.

It may sound like an horror movie, but it's not, as 66-year-old Jake Thomas learned the hard way.

Mr Thomas, a volunteer who mows the local cemetery at Werris Creek where his daughter Kim is buried, came across the snake during his usual clean-up. It was in a vase on a headstone.

Fearful about other people's safety, Mr Thomas cut the snake in half. Like most people would, he had thought the strike had killed the snake, so he left to finish off the rest of the cemetery maintenance.

About 45 minutes later he came back to get rid of the snake. "I put my hand in the vase to pick it up and it grabbed on to me even though it was dead," Mr Thomas said.

"I pulled my hand out and saw two little marks and knew it had got hold of me."

Read more...

Photo: Peter Lorimer/Daily Telegraph

Do you ever catch site of spotted salamanders and wood frogs in the field? The Orianne Society wants to recruit you.

From Living Alongside Wildlife:

The Orianne Society recently initiated "Snapshots in Time", a long-term Citizen Science project aimed at mobilizing people to monitor the timing of Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) and Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) breeding throughout the respective ranges of these species. The purpose of this project is to use the data collected—by on-the-ground citizens, year-after-year—to investigate possible effects of climate change on the timing of reproduction. Determining changes in the timing of breeding is very important, not just for these species, but others that use the same habitat. Ultimately, the results of this project could allow us to inform land managers and development planners of important areas for conservation and look deeper into what other species in these ecosystems may be negatively affected by climate change, including some endangered species.

Read more...

Photo: kingsnake.com user nategodin