Amphibians-- the frogs, toads, and this little lesser known group called the Caecilians.
It’s part of-– they are in a lot of trouble right now.
It’s been called an extinction crisis right now on the scale of the loss of the dinosaurs.
And it’s happening really fast.
For a lot of these species, one of their last hopes may actually be to bring them very quickly
into captivity and establish populations, survival insurance populations we call them,
in a zoo setting or in centers that are actually based closer to where those frogs live.
Just because declines are happening so fast it’s happening much faster than science
can keep up with what’s the solution to keep this disease from wiping out these populations
of frogs.
For us it was how do we control these diseases in the captive populations and how can we
give guidance to zoos on how to better control those things.
For our genetics division that’s worked on this, what they’ve been able to do is
develop methods to grow skin cell cultures of frogs, which is actually really difficult.
The frog amphibian cells haven’t cooperated in the past.
So they’ve worked on scientific methods to try to get those so that it can be permanently
archived in our frozen zoo.
Our national leadership grant is very complementary to what San Diego zoo is doing.
So, what they are working on is developing tests to be able to identify disease in amphibians
but also to cryopreserve, and biobank cells from amphibians.
Part of our project and why it complements it, is we are actually cryobanking reproductive
cells; so sperm, eggs, embryos and these kinds of things.
And why that’s really important is while you can bank down cells, and contribute to
studies looking at a whole host of factors, if we reap-– if we bank down reproductive
cells with we can actually use those to generate offspring.
So they are directly applicable to saving species.
So not only are we developing these reproductive technologies that are having immediate effects
to restoring populations, but we are also saving down genetics for the future that can
be reintroduced even after the death of an animal.
The work from IMLS here on this project is now supported.
We reintroduced more than 10,000 tadpoles back into the wild for restoring these populations.
Any time we lose a part of our biological system or ecological system, what happens
is it has unforeseen consequences and often those consequences are terrible for us, both
to our environment as well as to sometimes our own economy.
And so, for example, amphibians which we are working with have a tremendous impact on our
own economy for example.
There are hundreds of chemicals that pharmaceutical companies make from products that amphibians
secrete like biochemicals from their skin and so forth.
And they also eat a tremendous number of insects that we oftentimes view as pests.
And these pests are one of the main things on their menu.
So it protects us from having to spend more on insecticides and chemicals that we pour
into our environment.
And also what happens when you remove an animal like a flea like you mentioned, or if you
remove a frog or toad from the environment, it has a cascading effect that goes completely
through the ecosystem.
They contribute to millions and millions of dollars to the pharmaceutical company every
day and the next cure for cancer might be out there associated with an amphibian that’s
about to go extinct.
So not only are they important part of the ecology, but really they can have a tremendous
impact on our own economy and our health. �