After the trips

As we analyzed the data following the trip, we found that the tadpoles were 95% gone. Given what had happened at other sites where the disease had already hit, it was clear the few remaining frogs would be mostly lost. Eventually, when they came down from the trees and came in contact with the infected water or other infected organisms they would succumb to the disease. The algae looked more abundant but in science, impressions are not good enough. We analyzed our samples and this confirmed our impression, the algae had increased by a couple hundred percents. My computer models of the metabolism (essentially the breathing rate) of the stream showed this had probably altered as well.

We received word from Heidi and Edgardo that there was going to be a dam built upstream of our field site on Rio Maria. This alteration in flow would really make an enormous change in the stream with vast disruption of flow and very likely huge amounts of sediment entering the stream channel from construction. The developer who promised two years before that the valley would not be developed did not stand by this statement. Rio Maria would never be the same, and Amanda’s next visit confirmed the dam had been installed and the damage to our study reach was extensive.

Matt, Scott and Karen keep giving talks on the disappearance of the frogs to scientific and general public crowds. Many don’t know about what has happened there, in spite of the fact that we are losing so many species.

Heidi and Edgardo continue their unending work at the El Valle Amphibian Rescue Center. They have added at least 7 new species to their collection since I was down there, and the public exhibits are now open. They have hosted several international film crews interested in the frog extinction issue. The initial flood of press that occurred immediately after word came out of the disease reaching El Valle is over, but there continues to be interest in the topic. Some money is coming in, but more is always needed. There is no end to the need for work and resources required to care for and propagate the frogs that lived in the wild around El Valle. People who want to contribute to their work can do so through the Houston Zoo’s website.

Matt and I continued on our other projects. One of our aims in the US is to conserve and manage prairie streams, and there is lots of work to do on this, and little known about these streams. Issues such as expansion of trees and shrubs into grasslands, grazing, and water pollution from agriculture all are threatening one of the most endangered types of streams in North America, and the more we can find out about them the better. Emma and Bob keep working on the Grand Canyon and how to keep the ecosystem natural in spite of the Glen Canyon dam and other upstream impoundments altering the discharge. Cathy keeps working on other tropical sites including the island of Trinidad where she works with a group studying how environment interacts with evolution of the unique guppy species found there. Alex has his focus on tundra streams in Alaska and Iceland and ultimately the influence of global warming on those streams. Life goes on and there are other battles to fight. Still, losing the frogs at El Valle took part of me away that will never be returned.

In spite of the loss of the frogs, I want to return to El Valle. The area is beautiful and the people are fantastic. The loss of the frogs and then the quality of Rio Maria has left me as determined as ever to help document what people are doing to the environment around them, and how we can mitigate the negative effects we have. It also has helped me appreciate what we have in the natural world, and taught me to appreciate it today, because it may be lost tomorrow.
I still don’t know how to react to the lost frogs of Panama. It is a sad topic, and it keeps going around in my mind. It is like losing a loved one; you never forget but the time might dull the pain.

This cannot be a story with a happy ending. It is the way the world is going. Humans are spreading out and taking more per person, and most of the species on earth are hurting as a result. I hope my childrens’ children have the possibility of seeing a place like Rio Maria or other biologically rich areas in the tropics, on coral reefs, or near their own homes. Protection will only happen if people today want it to happen. As a biologist, my job now is to let others know about what is being lost, and document what is happening as it is.

The last days in El Valle

Before we left we all took a last look at the site. I am usually sad when I leave a research site, but was more affected this time. I had become attached to the stream. The frogs were gone and this was a huge blow. The impending construction led me to believe that much of what made this stream special would be gone if I ever made it back again. We drove up the bumpy dirt road each lost in our own thoughts.

When we reached the point where the pavement began I got out to turn the locks off on the hubs from four wheel drive. I noticed the front tire was low so we started back to town to get it filled up. Just before we made it to the gas station where it could be repaired the tire went completely flat. When they realized our tire was flat, a couple of men immediately ran over to help. We all knew how to do it, but they were so enthusiastic that we allowed them to do most of the work. In the US people are generally a bit less willing to help a stranger. It is possible that they did so for hopes of a tip, but they did not seem to expect anything for their attention.

We finally got back to the hotel, and by 7:00 that evening had processed most of the samples and made some progress on analyzing the data collected from the electronic probes we had in the field over the last week. We cleaned out the back of the trucks and found out that Cathy had left several pairs of dirty socks. This was certainly expected.
Our first look at the data suggested that the reason for the dense algal growths in the stream really was the lack of frogs. The discharge of the stream and other basic properties were almost identical to what we had measured two years ago; temperature was within a half degree Celsius. The tropics are remarkably constant relative to many temperate habitats.

Piet had collected some samples for Emma that required centrifugation. We took some time off for dinner, and after we got back Piet worked on samples until about midnight. Heidi brought over a guitar for Alex and I played harmonica with him for awhile. We turned in relatively early because the next day we would leave for Panama City and we had a lot to get done before we could leave. Amanda would stay behind and continue sampling at the experiment site. I lay in bed contemplating the loss of the frogs and the construction on the site.

I was concerned about Amanda’s financial condition and left her some money. She had some problem with money being transferred into an account in the states, and had very little to live on for her next month in Panama. This was paying it forward in a way.

When I was a student traveling in Costa Rica, Dan Janzen was staying in the hotel we were using. Janzen is probably the best known living tropical ecologist in the world. He has dedicated his life to studying and conserving the tropics. He has since been elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and received the half million dollar McArthur Fellowship (the “Genius” award). He is one of my scientific heroes.

The hero bit was cemented given his response to an overheard phone conversation with my parents about wiring money to Guatemala. I was going there next by bus, and they had not received an earlier request from me to wire money to Costa Rica. When I got off the phone he asked me how much money I had. I told him I had $50, and he immediately gave me $100 more. He knew it possible to be refused entry into many Central American countries if you were not carrying enough money and I could be stranded at any of the four border crossings between Costa Rica and Guatemala. That was a good bit of money to give a stranger in 1977. I had to bother him for an address to send the money to repay him, and have been an admirer ever since. My admiration has only increased due to his untiring work to preserve tropical biodiversity, including helping establish the National parks of Costa Rica, and habitat restoration in that country.

Packing the next day took a long time. We not only had our own gear, but many boxes of scientific equipment that needed to be organized and packed and moved into our one remaining room. I took a brief walk up the stream that flows by the hotel and noticed a large raiding party of army ants on the trail. Thousands were spread out in one area, and columns of them were racing along a cleared trail across the forest floor. Many were carrying insect parts and others were carrying eggs and larvae.

I made the mistake of mentioning this to Alex when I returned and he grabbed his camera and ran out of the room. He returned later with a grin and a number of bites from the soldier army ants. Packing took all morning and took longer without Alex. We finally went to grab lunch with Heidi and Edgardo. After lunch, we threw our gear in the back of the truck and headed out of town. The remainder of the trip was unremarkable. This was good because riots were still occurring in Panama City. The only evidence we saw of them was a large line of army personnel with machine guns standing guard around a building as we drove to the airport at 6:00 am. Evidently the rioters kept more civilized hours.On the plane I reflected on how out of kilter my second trip to Panama seemed relative to my first. Foremost, was the disappearance of the frogs. Second, was the development entering the valley of Rio Maria. Finally, all the little things, getting sick, the stolen computer, the flat tire, the malfunctioning gear, Matt being worried about his animals, and concern over the riots in Panama City, that had happened this time but not the last .

The end of the experiment

We returned to the hotel and analyzed our samples for nitrogen. We were done around 4:00 in the afternoon and decided to drive down to the beach. Alex opted to stay behind. He needed to teach a lecture to his class the morning after he got home. His notes for it were on the disappeared laptop. He borrowed one of our computers, planted himself with two pillows propped behind his back on his bed and got to work re-writing his lecture.

Not 15 minutes after we left, he heard a sound at the window. One of the maintenance men from the hotel was climbing up a stepladder to the window. Looking quite startled to see Alex in his room, he continued climbing and did something right above the window.

He left rather quickly and a short time later another hotel worker came and took the ladder. Alex went out to look at what the maintenance man was doing but saw nothing other than a concrete sill and the top of the window. Nothing looked changed or worked on; there was essentially nothing to work on there.
It all seemed very suspicious given that Alex’s laptop had disappeared from two rooms down, and the thief hand entered through the same window. We decided Edgardo was probably correct about who had taken the computer earlier, but had no way to do anything about it.

The next day was our last field day and we needed to collect samples of all the organisms in the stream so that we could determine where the nitrogen tracer had ended up. We collected algae from rocks, rotting leaves (filled with fungi and bacteria), and fine sediments both at the water surface and from the stream bottom. These are the primary food sources for the few remaining tadpoles, and many of the invertebrate larvae, freshwater crabs and few freshwater shrimp in the stream.

The other animals still in the stream are predators, such as the large (half inch long) vicious dragonfly larvae with extendable jaws that flip out and jab prey, and the dark brown hellgrammites as long a pinky finger with massive pinching jaws. A little caution is necessary with the hellgrammites because their jaws can draw blood. Amanda collected the animals because she had the collection permits from the Panamanian government, such permits are not necessary for leaves, sediment, and algae.

We pulled all our electronic probes out of the stream and attempted to download the data. I went to get the light meters from a clearing on the hill and walked down the new road carved over the last few days into the hillside above our research site. It went to an area along the hill about half way up our experimental reach.

The new road had broad areas of dirt that had been exposed. At the top of the cut, it was easy to see that the jungle soil has a thin black layer that sits on a very poor mineral soil beneath. In the US, this type of construction would require that materials be placed over the open sediments to stop erosion from allowing the sediments to pollute the nearby streams. No such requirements are in place in Panama, or if they were, they were not being enforced. Luckily, sediments from the construction had a hundreds of feet to go through the forest and densely vegetated side channels before reaching our stream. The rapid regrowth might cover the open sediments before the rainy season came and erosion began in earnest.

The sediments would not influence our results from this week. However, once all the houses were built in the marked lots, it looked very likely to me that the portion of Rio Maria we were studying would become severely degraded. This was sad, but being a researcher, thoughts of coming back to document the effects also occurred to me. Just recently ecologists have started studying urban and suburban streams in the US, but little work has been done elsewhere in the world. With our extensive background data, we would be able to detect any changes that occurred in the stream. This seems to be the way than many scientists deal with bad things, they study them.

Upon my return to the stream with the light meters, I learned that one of the instruments had malfunctioned, but we had a duplicate, so this was not a problem. The pump that had been used to release the tracer was turned off. As we carried the last of the sampling gear and electronics it started pouring rain. The group joke was “Dry season? This is a heck of a way to run a rain forest”. Not a great joke, but it had rained every day and this was an unusually wet dry season .

Truck swap and the cloud forest

Later that evening we continued processing samples and preparing containers for the next day of sampling. Procedures for dealing with samples mostly consisted of filtering, but a lot of care was required not to cross-contaminate samples. Samples were dried if possible and frozen if not. Frozen samples were difficult to transport back to the US, but it could be done with a cooler and the maximum of 4 pounds of dry ice that was allowed to be checked in luggage. It makes sense not to allow more, the dry ice can release a large amount of carbon dioxide, and if this occurs in a confined area could possibly cause suffocation.

The next day the four early departures left for Panama City and the rest of us went to the field. After a typical day at Rio Maria, we finished our sampling and drove back. Just as we got to the hotel, Amanda’s phone began to ring. When she dug it out, we found out that Matt had taken the wrong truck to Panama City, and the people at the Smithsonian Research Institute were insisting that the correct truck be returned. This was frustrating because the trucks were the same make and the same age. They insisted on the one we had so Amanda and Alex had to drive to Panama City to exchange them. They drove down and back (4 hours) while Bob and I worked on the data we had collected. They finally retuned at 1:30 am. At least they got a good dinner at our favorite Peruvian seafood restaurant in the city while they were there.

The next morning as we traveled to the field site, I started to feel the pounding of the road. It was not as bad as during our previous trip because about half of the road had been paved since then. Still, the two steepest hills were rough clay roads with ruts, and we all mentioned how we were beginning to feel it. It is amazing that there are truck and bus drivers that take the lower half of this route all day every day.

The day was a short sampling and experiment day. We started experiments and then waited three hours to read the results. Alex had broken the edge off a termite nest attached to a tree and we watched them repair the damage as Alex narrated with infectious and perhaps slightly deranged entomological zeal.
When their nest is damaged, termite soldiers swarm out to protect it. This species of termite had soldiers with nozzle heads. The heads release a sticky excretion that clogs up any predator. After the initial disruption, the colony settled down and the workers started moving to the edge of the damage and placing bits of masticated wood or soil and then turning around and cementing them in with secretions from their abdomens. Within a day the edge of the nest was sealed off.

Termite nests are most commonly preyed upon by raiding ants. The first defense is a strong wall on the nest, the second the soldiers gumming up the ants with their adhesive. The social insects in the jungle are either constantly at war with others, or under the threat of pirate-like attackers that literally are out to eat and or enslave their prey.

While termites are a nuisance to homeowners because they eat wood, they are a vital part of tropical ecology. They break down dead wood and release locked up nutrients much more rapidly than would occur otherwise. Termites have specialized microbial communities in their guts that break down cellulose and make the carbon available to the termite. Fallen wood does not last very long on a jungle forest floor in large part because of termites and the fact that their activities increase rates of bacterial and fungal breakdown of wood in this warm moist habitat.

Interestingly, termites are one of the larger sources of methane in our atmosphere. The bacteria in their gut release the gas into the atmosphere. This is an important greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. The first estimates of release rates were too high because they did not account for the presence of other bacteria in the walls of the mound that eat much of the released methane before it escapes into the atmosphere.

On our trip back from Rio Maria to El Valle that afternoon we stopped at the highest point in the road and hiked up a trail to an overlook. Hiking the trail was very strenuous; it was only a half mile, but it was very steep. We had all our most valuable equipment (computers and cameras) with us because of the lack of security at the hotel, and the inability to properly secure items in the trucks. The hike was made a bit more difficult with the packs we needed to carry. Impressively, the trail had many concrete steps. The concrete had to be packed in on the narrow trail. The last bit of the trail to the top was wooden stairs, and they were steep and slippery.

At the top of the trail was a true cloud forest with what appeared to be primary growth trees. Clouds poured over the high mountains and the ridge we were on. A continuous mist permeated the air. The forest was dripping wet and mosses grew on every surface that did not have higher plants on it. The trees were not extraordinarily tall, presumably because of the fierce winds that pummeled the ridge during the many tropical storms in the area. Each tree was covered with hundreds of species of epiphytic plants. Their sides were enveloped with vines, and their branches supported numerous bromeliads and orchids.

The flowers were sturdy and apparently pollinated by bees or hummingbirds. In colder areas, smaller pollinating insects cannot move well enough to fly. Bees can thermoregulate to some degree by moving their wings to increase their body temperature. Their relatively large bodies do not lose this heat as quickly as those of their smaller relatives. Hummingbirds, of course, are warm blooded. To some extent the large bees, and certainly the hummingbirds can fly up the steep hills from the warmer lower elevations in a matter of minutes.

The view from the top was spectacular, as clouds moved rapidly across the mountains and others opened temporarily nearby allowing us glimpses of pieces all around us. Immediately across the nearest valley, the large pinnacle of rock (the remains of the core of an old volcano) had a lake right at its base. Called a Marr lake, it had formed when a steam explosion underground made a perfectly round hole. Behind us, El Valle nestled in its 6 mile wide crater, was formed in a similar (albeit substantially more catastrophic and impressive) fashion. Thirty miles away, the ocean was visible and the steep gradient of moisture between it and us was apparent.

The cloud forest we were in gave way to a less stunted forest first, then eventually to a dry seasonal forest. Since this was the “dry” season, many trees on the lower slopes of the mountain had dropped their leaves and were now brown. They would grow new ones once the wet season started again. But for now, the transition from green, to brown, to the blue ocean was brilliant.

We could see the development encroaching on the entire watershed of El Valle. Tropical forest was being bulldozed to make half million dollar homes. The cul-de-sacs were evident from miles away. These cul-de-sacs looked just like those in any new subdivision in suburban US.

The stolen computer

Other than the fact that the frogs were gone, the trip was going well. However, the first signs of something less than a smooth trip came up that night. I started getting sick with both a cold and a case of Montezuma’s revenge (or, as referred to in Panama, Noriega’s revenge). Matt got word from home that a large ice storm had taken the power out at his house.

His family was safe and they had a fireplace, but it was not enough to keep the over one hundred snakes, lizards, frogs, and tortoises warm. Matt had a large collection, and if the power was out for a sustained period of time many of these animals could be lost. Matt spent a lot of time on the phone with his wife planning how to protect the animals. The temperate ones would be ok if it did not freeze so they were moved into the basement. The tropical species could die if they even got cold, so they were moved as close to the fireplace as possible. Matt’s wife is a good sport, but she no doubt did not want to deal with being stuck at home in a massive ice storm with no power. Matt felt guilty and worried.

The next morning things got a bit better when Matt found out that power had been restored at home, and we once again went up to the stream to do research. We needed to collect our electronic sensor data. When Alex went to do that we found that the commands to start the electronics had been entered incorrectly and we had no data from the previous collection. Fortunately, we had several more days to collect data so we proceeded with experiments to find out how the invertebrate insect larvae, fish, and crabs would respond to the lack of tadpoles competing for the food that they also ate.

That evening we walked to a nice new restaurant nearby and had a fantastic dinner. While wandering home we got a bit lost. We were in a good mood when we got back to the hotel and planned to chat over drinks. Then Alex discovered that his laptop computer was not in his room, and suddenly things did not look so good. His first concern was not the value of the computer, but what data were on it that had not been backed up. Fortunately, all the data from Panama were backed up, and the rest of Alex’s possessions (particularly his passport) and our lab gear were still there.

Unfortunately, Alex had just returned from a winter sampling trip on the North Slope of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay, and all his photographs from that trip were lost. Photos from Rio Maria were also gone, but they could be re-taken.

The police were called and we ascertained that the thief had entered through a window. Edgardo suspected that someone from the hotel was responsible, but we were not so certain.

The only amusing moment of the night was when Matt went out and around to the window to see how easy it was to reach into where the laptop had been. He had his head and body in the window and was reaching down toward where the computer had been when the police, who had just arrived, walked into the room. Matt turned very red and the police eventually understood what was going on, but it looked a bit suspicious at first. We had returned at 10:00 and the police were there for 3 hours before they left.

The next morning we woke up and realized we needed to reassess our approach to security and decide if we wanted to stay in the hotel. We could not afford the time it would take to move, so decided to stay put. We fashioned bars to put in the windows and figured out hiding places for our valuables. Most valuables we either needed to take with us or leave somebody behind to guard the rooms. This was not too difficult that day because we had a number of samples that needed to be processed in our laboratory/ hotel rooms, so some of the group stayed. Alex went with Edgardo to the town an hour away where the police report needed to be filed with the detectives. We knew that this was a lost cause, but Edgardo wanted to document the string of problems that had occurred at the hotel.

The research project, at least, was only coming up against minor hitches and seemed to be going well. We returned from our field day and went to dinner as a group. While we were out we heard that police had shot a labor protester in Colon, the Panamanian city on the north (Caribbean) side of the Panama Canal. The riots from Colon had spread to Panama City. The police had arrested 500 people and Panama City was being shut down. Matt, Karen, Kathy and Emma needed to leave soon and we started feeling concerned about getting out smoothly and safely. El Valle was safe, but we needed to travel through Panama City to get home.

The Disease

That evening we had several discussions about the disease and the decline and loss of frog species. This was fascinating to hear because Karen is a world expert on it and Heidi and Egardo are local experts on methods of culturing and modes of disease. Both have dedicated their professional lives to different aspects of the disease.

Not much is known about how the disease propagates and why it kills some species and not others. The thought is that the fungus is centered on the streams and when adult frogs come in contact with the stream or infected animals they contract the disease. Some tadpoles can withstand the disease, but others loose their mouthparts and become unable to feed. The mode of disease transmission explains why there were still some tadpoles in Rio Maria. Adult frogs can live for many years and do not necessarily breed every year. If a frog stays out of the stream and has no contact with infected individuals, it may live through the first wave of disease. Eventually, however, the frog mates or contacts another frog with the disease and contracts the disease.

The frog-to-frog transmission also makes sense with respect to the rate of spread of the disease. The disease spreads through the lowland tropics without killing most species. Apparently at the higher temperatures, the fungus is less deadly to amphibians found Central America. Models of the rate of the disease spread based on animal-to-anima contact are consistent with the observed rates of spread. The wave-like movement of the disease front is also consistent with an amphibian contact route. If the disease was spread by wind or carried around by birds or flowing water, the rate of spread and geographic pattern of disease spread would be very different.

Karen also mentioned recent research indicating that the cause of the spread of the disease is not well known. Recent results suggest that the African Clawed Frogs are not the source of the disease because genetic analysis indicates the strain of fungus originated in New England.

However, the disease was reported in samples of Clawed Frogs taken in Africa as early as 1938, the approximate time when international trade of the species began. The presence of the disease was determined in museum specimens. Nobody knew about this disease in the 1930’s when the sample was collected. However, modern techniques can isolate DNA from preserved samples, amplify it with the polymerase chain reaction method, and analyze the sample for genes that are only found in the chytrid fungus that causes the disease. This is the same procedure used to exonerate criminals in rape or murder cases that are many years old; the biological samples from the crime are analyzed for the DNA left in them. Biologists trying to reconstruct genetics of the past now analyze tiny bits of samples preserved in museums.

The difficulty with pinning down an exact source of the frog disease is that many species of frogs are moved around the world all the time, and other species can carry the disease as well. Indiscriminate movement of species can have very negative unforeseen consequences. The end result is the same regardless of exactly where the disease came from; the disease is in Central America and causing numerous extinctions. The moral for the future is that we should be very careful about moving biological materials around the globe.

Regardless of the exact original cause, the disease has spread around the world and is endangering species in many places. The disease was first recognized in Australia, where it has caused many frog deaths and spread to New Zealand and Tasmania. Only a few realized the problems the disease caused in the US because it spread in the mid 1900’s when people were unaware of the issues or and frog populations were not carefully documented. Now people are becoming aware of the disease in the US. For example, it is harming salamanders in the Southeastern part of the country.

With so many people and animals moving around, the spread of the disease is inexorable. In South America, separate infections were initiated in several distinct areas and now it has spread through much of the northern part of the continent.

The Amphibian Rescue Center

That afternoon we visited the El Valle Amphibian Rescue Center that Edgardo and Heidi were running. The facility is located in El Níspero Zoo and Botanical Garden. This is a beautiful facility. The buildings are nothing special, but he grounds have fantastic gardens with a huge diversity of plants.

The zoo and garden are quite different from those found in the US. It was originally a private animal collection before the owner decided to open it to the public. The zoo breeds animals for sale to the public, including some very valuable fighting cocks. The animal rights politics are obviously different in Panama than in the United States, where no zoo would breed and sell fighting animals.

The botanical garden propagated and sold plants. There were rows of tropical ornamental vegetation. Many of these are common houseplants in temperate areas, but they were huge and showey growing outside here.

The zoo is also involved in a conservation effort trying to rehabilitate tapir populations in Panama. The tapir was extirpated by hunting in Panama, and now they were breeding animals to re-introduce into the wild. They have large outside exclosures where the tapirs are held. Tapirs are large (adults are 6-7 feet long) and look like giant pigs with a short elephant-like prehensile snout. They are related to horses and rhinoceroses, and all species are endangered. They were not very active when we were there, being a nocturnal animal.

The Rescue Center is at the back of the zoo in a new building that is being outfitted as a public display on one side and an area to grow frogs on the other. They had recently received a large donated shipment of aquaria for the displays. The aquaria were five or six feet wide, the same height, and a couple feet deep. The aquaria were shipped from the US and Edgardo had to spend some time negotiating with customs to get them without paying thousands of dollars in taxes. They were obviously worth a good amount of money, and the customs officials needed to be convinced they were for a non-profit organization.

The aquaria had been hauled to El Valle and now Edgardo was doing the back-breaking work of opening each large shipping container. The aquaria were somewhat delicate so they needed to be moved into the display area gently. While Edgardo had some help, it is obvious that he is not afraid of hard work and does not use the title of director of the center to avoid unpleasant jobs.

The display area is a large room within a room. The inner room, where the public visitors will be, has cutout walls that will hold the aquaria and the area outside the inner room forms a corridor in a ring around the building where the keepers can access the cages. The inner walls had newly finished murals of jungle life painted by a volunteer artist from the US. I am told that now it is finished, it is a very nice display. The paintings range from lowland to highland Panama and depict native species. The idea of the display is to educate visitors about not just the frogs, but also the habitats that they are found living in.
Next we went to the culture rooms. Before entering these rooms, we removed our shoes and put on bleached sandals. This was one of many steps necessary to keep the fungal disease out of the facility.

Two completed smaller rooms already had dozens of aquaria with frogs. These rooms were off of a central large room with twice as many aquaria as the two smaller rooms. This room was not yet finished, but was almost ready for use. Installing all the lighting, the misters to keep the humidity as high as it needs to be for the frogs to thrive, and access to all the aquaria required a huge amount of preperation.
The amount of work done to construct the facility in less than a year was amazing. It was very ambitious to make both the display area and the animal rearing facilities at the same time. This work was completed while also caring for frogs, going on collecting trips to areas the disease had not yet reached, and working with a large number of zoo personnel from the US and elsewhere.

The frog deaths in El Valle had led to international news exposure and Edgardo gave numerous interviews and had several news stories and documentaries written about him. He also took a tour of some zoos in the US to talk about the frog declines and the Panamanian projects. All of these various talks and interviews demanded time.
Initially, food was collected from the wild. This took a huge amount of time every day. Now, there were several insect cultures to feed the frogs. However, some food was still taken from the wild. The termites that some species of frogs eat were lured into buried fake logs, and then after the colony was established the larval termites removed and fed to the frogs. Learning how to grow the different types of food for the frogs took a good bit of time.

We viewed adults, young and tadpoles of the 15 target species that the center was working with. Heidi was obviously proud of each of these beautiful frogs and their ability to keep them alive. In spite of the year and a half of 15 hour work days she and Edgardo had put in, she was enthusiastic and energetic. She showed us every species of frog they had, and commented on what they ate, or how successful they had been in getting them to reproduce.
The most important objectives were to keep the frogs in the center free of disease and to figure out how to propagate the frogs. Some of the species have never been raised in the wild, and finding the appropriate conditions for the frogs to breed took a good amount of experimentation with temperature, moisture, food, and habitat variations.
There is a quarantine room, with the entrance from the outside, separated from all the others, where untreated frogs can be housed. The sick frogs, if they are not too far gone, are dosed with chemicals to cure the disease and held until it is fairly certain they do not carry it any more. This set up allows the frogs to be cleared of the disease before they enter the main rearing facility.

The clean rooms have several levels of protection. Entering water goes through filters with such a fine retention that the microscopic fungus cannot pass through them. Two local workers were working in gloves to work on aquaria. They were noting the condition of each frog, giving them the appropriate food, and cleaning the cage. Workers continuously spray disinfectant, and change gloves between working on each tank. The room that houses the higher elevation frogs is cooled, and every tank is regularly misted with an automatic system. The center has a large generator to deal with any power outages. Power outages are common in this part of the world, and a lack of power for any length of time could lead to untreated water entering the system and spreading disease, warming of the cool areas above the temperature tolerances of the frogs, and loss of the few remaining individuals of each of the species.

The center is successfully breeding frogs that would be completely gone otherwise. Their ultimate goal is to reintroduce the frogs into the wild. Frogs grown in zoos from many countries could not be used for this because they may transfer other exotic diseases to the Panamanian frogs. The short-term goal is to propagate enough animals to preserve the species and then to populate exhibits. The long-term goal is also to become established as a research center for veterinarians and scientists studying the frogs and the disease.

Ocelot tracks and colored beetles

As always the jungle is fascinating, and every time you go, there are new things. Beetles as large as a thumbnail with bright yellow and black stripes were eating bright white shelf fungi that were growing on a log that had fallen over the stream. The color contrast was stark and beautiful. Nothing subtle about this bit of natural history. A river of leaf cutter ants used the same log with the beetles and fungi as a bridge to carry leaves back to their nest. Army ants swarmed across a nearby log.

At one point I thought I saw a frog jump away from my foot. When I finally located the moving animal, it turned out to be a lizard with its head shaped like a leaf. The lizard was so cryptically colored that it took me 5 minutes to point it out to Bob, even though we were a few feet away from it. We saw a number of other lizards and skinks during the day that apparently had not been killed by the disease.

That evening we were able to visit Heidi and Edgardo in their new house. The place was much better than the old lab they had been living in. They had a nice dog, and a yard now, and were within a short walk of the Rescue Center. It was fortunate they had found a good place to live, the real estate market was very tight in El Valle. The demand for second homes and tourist accommodations had led to first world prices in a developing country. Given that the rescue center paid very little, finding this house really made it possible to do the work they needed to do.

The next day we took a short trip to collect a few samples and check that the experiment was running properly, including changing the solution that we were dripping into the stream and measuring the pump rate. Everything was going smoothly. Once that was done we had some time to take a walk upstream. There were occasional tadpoles and I found the only adult frog of the day. It was no bigger than a dime that looked more like a moss than a frog. I only spotted it because it jumped when I stepped near it.
On our way back downstream we saw a track in the sand which we photographed. Electronics have made this a very small world. We sent an email of the picture to a world expert on mammal tracks, and he confirmed that it was an ocelot track. This was interesting news since we had seen no other evidence of large animals. The monkeys, peccaries, and other large animals that would have been in a pristine jungle in this area had been hunted out, but somehow this large cat was holding on.

The next day Alex found some scat, a ropelike pile of feces on a rock in the center of the stream. This is the habit that ocelots have when they excrete feces. We got back fairly early and Karen Lips and her student had arrived from other sites in Panama where they had been surveying for frogs and lizards the past few days.

This was the first time I had gotten to talk to Karen Lips. She is petite with short, dark stylish hair, a quick smile and large brown eyes. Going into the field with her, I was impressed that she was better dressed than most field ecologists and somehow managed to stay clean even though she was working her way through a muddy jungle. Her life revolves around study of frogs and she spends 3 months in the tropics most years. If you want to start Karen talking, frogs are the topic guaranteed to get her going. She doesn’t just talk about frogs, she is animated and strongly opinionated about any controversy in the world of amphibian science.

The frogs at El Valle were really gone.

When we reached the stream, I hopped out. I walked to the streams bank and started scanning for tadpoles. The pool at the road crossing had a few small ones on the sand bar, but far fewer than our last trip. There were none of the large species that attached to the rocks in the faster moving parts of the streams.

Strikingly, bright green filamentous algae covered the bottom of the pool where very little had been two years before. My first guess was that the increased algae was related to the decreased grazing by tadpoles. Without the herbivorous species of tadpoles at high densities, particularly the large ones that attached to the rocks and moved across them eating the algae, the algae attached to the rocks was able to increase dramatically. This is exactly the effect that Karen had describe to Matt occurring at other sites where the frogs had disappeared that got Matt started thinking about the whole-system consequences of the frog die offs. The system, even at first glace, was obviously different from 2 years ago.

As I walked up the stream there were no adult frogs at all. This same trail had so many that their calls were constant and it was difficult not to step on them two years ago. I had been dreading this since leaving the site two years before. The sound of heavy machinery in the distance had replaced the calls of the frogs that previously had filled the air along the jungle trail. The group did not talk about it. Some our group had not been there before, so could not truly understand the changes. The rest of us just did not talk about it but went about our work.

We took some samples to the truck and Edgardo drove up to help. Heidi was back at the Rescue Center and had no time to help with the research. Heidi and Edgardo had a new vehicle from their work with the North American zoos. I gave Edgardo a hug and we looked each other in the eyes. I knew he understood what I was thinking. I mentioned how depressing the loss of the frogs was. His reply was “You have no idea”. Of course I had no idea. He had worked on these frogs for years. He had dedicated is life to them.

We took a few background samples and put in some monitoring equipment. Then we drove back to the hotel and started preparations for the big field day the next morning. I got into Amanda and Piet’s room and started cleaning up the lab area. I don’t really care how people keep their personal space, but dirty and cluttered lab space leads to disorganization and lost and contaminated samples. The room was so bad otherwise that Amanda started taking showers in Matt’s and my room. The one in her room was filthy.

Cathy Pringle had arrived seperately at the hotel while we were gone. She asked if the frogs were really gone. Piet had emailed earlier that some were left. We all wanted to believe that Rio Maria would not be hit as hard as the other sites. I had seen the stream, and it was obvious what had happened. I told her how sparse they were and she shook her head.

Alex briefly talked to me about the frogs being gone, he was obviously upset. Bob did not seem as upset, but he does not share feelings, so it was difficult to tell for sure. At the time he seemed more concerned about cocktail hour. Maybe it was displacement behavior. Matt and I were rooming together and talked before we went to sleep that night. He mentioned that when he had gone through this at a previous site, he had hoped in the back of his mind that Karen Lips’ predictions about when the disease would hit and how it would decimate the frog populations, would be wrong. But she had been right. We had gone through the same thing at Rio Maria. Intellectually I knew they were gone, but the reality was not easy to bear. This time Matt knew what to expect and was not as shocked. The drinks that evening had done nothing to lift my spirits, and the mood was somber as we fell asleep.

The next morning it took us a few hours to get our gear together and head up to the stream. We got there around 10:00 am and started to work. There were 9 of us and we worked until 6:00 pm. We only heard 3 frogs calling and saw one living frog. Heidi and Edgardo grabbed it and took it to try to culture it and treat it for the disease. It would be placed in the quarantine area of the Rescue Center.

It was a long and exhausting day, and the changes in the stream became obvious as we sampled. We were moving up and down the banks of the stream using the trail that had been cut by machete two years ago. Of course the jungle regrows rapidly, and a good amount of vegetation needed to be removed to make it possible to move up and down the trail with all the equipment we had. The observation of more algae was borne out as we took more quantitative samples. There were more fish, and more invertebrates that eat algae. Some of the invertebrate larvae that relied upon the activities of the tadpoles were gone. The diversity of the tropical forest was as startling as ever, with the exception of the frogs.

Back to El Valle

The trip down to Panama was uneventful. Most of us met in the Atlanta airport to catch our flight. Matt and I sat in a bar in the airport and went through figures on the textbook we were writing. We also started planning the logistics of the next round of experiments. We continued the work on the plane in spite of Matt’s propensity to air sickness. We arrived in Panama City, again the blast of tropical air getting off the plane and a late night trip into the city center.

Piet and Amanda met us in the airport. Amanda Rugenski is a graduate student in Matt’s lab. She has a brown ponytail, a husky voice and an athletic bearing. I found out later that she is into outdoor recreation and enjoyed hard core skiing, rock climbing, back packing and mountain biking. Amanda is very smart, quick on the uptake, and turned out to be very good in the field.

This trip, my luggage and everyone else’s made it. The drill was the same as the previous trip. Matt ran to the Smithsonian to check in and prepare chemicals and get vehicles. We drove out of the city and picked up supplies. We had a difficult time deciding which aged rums to buy to try. By the next afternoon we had made it up to El Valle, checked into our hotel rooms, and got our gear ready for our first quick trip to the stream. We needed to get a few samples collected and start some equipment running. Piet launched into questioning me about the experiment immediately.

The Hotel Campestre was in obvious disrepair. The large lobby and one wing of the rooms had been completely torn down and only partially rebuilt. It had been only two years but the grounds were less well kept and the jungle was creeping back in.

The building we had used for a lab and housing 2 years before was not available and Amanda and Piet had only one room/ lab to use. The room was a wreck with equipment and dirty clothes everywhere. They had not had any maid service so there was a peculiar smell in there. The large amount of water filtering had led to some spills. Apparently, neither was willing to clean if the other did not, and neither did. I initially felt bad for the hotel staff who would ultimately end up cleaning up the mess, but these feelings lessened as events unfolded.
The road to Rio Maria was quite a bit better than before. It was paved up to the first steepest hill. Some of the pavement was not great because it was covered with gravel and almost as slippery as a muddy road. The top of the road was as bad as ever, there had been a landslide across it and it was very muddy and rough.

As we went over the lip of the volcano and down into the Rio Maria valley the most striking thing was the new paved roads and fresh gashes through the forest to construct dirt roads. A housing development was being constructed across the valley very near the stream. As we approached the stream the road widened and had obviously been improved. A hundred feet of jungle had been bulldozed out on either side of the road. It looked like development on both sides of the Rio Maria was going to happen in spite of the fact that there were assurances that the watershed would be preserved only two years ago. Obviously the developer/ land owner was not telling Edguardo and Heidi the truth earlier.

frogs, bison, overkill, and extinction

I left home and drove through the Flint Hills of Kansas on my way to the airport to catch my flight to Panama City. It was a frigid morning, and the tallgrass prairie was starkly beautiful. The sun was rising and the light gave a slight orange/pink hue the wind-burnished patches of snow clinging to the northern slopes of the rolling hills. The old big bluestem grass stalks were buffeted by the winds. This was the kind of morning that made me glad not to be living as the indigenous people did during this inhospitable time of year. This was the type of morning where the Native Americans, and later the European settlers that invaded the area, would have stayed inside till the sun took the bite off the bitter windy cold. The icy landscape was stark contrast to the tropical mountain rainforest that I was headed to.

As I drove through these prairie hills, my mind started worrying on the idea of extinction, ecological loss, and the modern world. Only a fiftieth of tallgrass prairie remains in the North America, much of it in the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma. As I drove to the east, and out of the Flint Hills, the land was taken over by croplands. In a few minutes I was witnessing the transition that altered the vast North American prairies when Europeans broke the sod in the 1800’s. Much of the Midwest’s productive cropland was once a sea of grass.
The Flint Hills only retain grassland by lucky accident. The shallow rocky soils make them better for raising cattle than cropland. The ranchers burn yearly to keep the trees at bay and the cattle simulate the herds of grazing bison that historically roamed the prairie. Where fire has been suppressed, the trees invade. Prairie is becoming more imperiled in the Flint Hills because of the human influence changing the natural fire frequency that occurred. This effect is particularly pronounced in areas with higher population densities where people have built their houses out in the country… an effect that we will see has parallels in Panama.

Bison (popularly referred to as buffalo) are a “keystone” species that shaped prairie ecology, and their loss from the prairies could be considered analogous to the loss of the frogs in the jungle streams. The researchers I work with in Kansas have found that bison are key in maintaining the very high diversity of plants found in tallgrass prairies. There are literally hundreds of species of plants in a healthy prairie. The bison stimulate this productivity by grazing the main grasses that would outcompete the forbs (leafy plants). They also leave fertilizer packets (dung and urine) that stimulate plants that require higher nitrogen conditions. Bison disturb areas with their hoof-prints, their wallows where they take dust baths, and the trails they cut through areas as the herd moves across the landscape. The tadpoles, in the streams, do analogous things. They graze selectively, they disturb some areas more than others, and they excrete and enrich areas with their fecal pellets.

As impressive as the accounts were of massive bison herds on the prairies, there were once much more impressive herds of large mammals that roamed the prairies. Humans were responsible for even move extensive alteration of the natural ecosystems of North America. Before the end of the last ice-age approximately 10,000 years ago, the plains and forests of North America once were home to an astounding diversity of large animals. When tribes of hunter-gatherers that ultimately became the Indians of North America crossed the land bridge and spread across North America, they found a land of plenty.
The diversity of North America rivaled that of the plains of Africa. Camels, horses, huge bison, ground sloths, saber-tooth cats, giant beavers, giant armadillos, mammoths and mastodons were here. These large animals had no evolutionary experience with humans, and within a few human generations they were hunted to extinction.

Similar extinctions of large animals occurred in Central and South America as people swept in from Siberia, through North America and to the south. The America’s are not unique. In Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar and many other smaller islands the archeological and fossil record is unequivocal. When humans arrive, the large animals disappear. Marsupials disappeared from Australia, giant flightless birds were slaughtered in New Zealand, giant birds and lemurs were hunted to extinction in Madagascar. People are consistent in their heavy-handed environmental presence. We are the most successful species because we shape each environment we enter to meet our own needs.

The ecological effects of the extinction of the large herbivorous mammals and their predators are not well understood, but they were probably significant. Some species of plants remain that have large fruits with seeds that are only dispersed successfully over any distance when they pass thought the guts of large animals. The animals ingest the large fruits and carry the seeds within them substantially away before depositing the seeds with a packet of fertilizer. But, animals large enough to pull down tree limbs and graze the crowns of trees no longer range across the landscape.

One difference between historic extinctions and the ongoing disappearance of the frogs of high-elevation Central American habitats is that we can study the ecosystem effects of the removal of an entire taxonomic group in Panama. Perhaps these studies will help us understand the unintended ways that humanity is influencing global ecology and aid in mitigating or minimizing future impacts. At least it could help document some of the negative consequences that could come about from extinctions or extirpations of species.

Getting the team back to Panama

Now, I was starting to see the direct evidence of the die off as it came through, provided by my colleagues on the ground as the disease wave passed. Scott sent photos of dying frogs around to the group. Alex had videos of dying frogs. The frogs look duller skinned and are lethargic. Their skin is sloughing off of their bodies. The frogs that are not quite dead are not able to right themselves when turned on their backs.

During the die off, the Scott and the other researchers that were there collected as many dead frogs as they could find. He sent a picture of gallon pickle jars full of preserved dead frogs. The frogs in the jars will be identified, but not all species are collected before they decompose.

The species apparently contract the disease when they contact other sick frogs or come in contact with the stream. Some of the species in the trees might avoid contact for some time, but eventually, they will become infected. Thus, the die off is fairly concentrated, but some obscure species might hold on for a few weeks or months after the main epidemic sweeps through the jungle. Some of the species of frogs will probably never be known to science and will be lost in nature before they are described. Watching these videos and seeing these pictures made me even more apprehensive about returning to El Valle.

This group was to be slightly different from the last. Matt, Bob, Alex, Piet, and Cathy all were coming. In addition Karen Lips was going to be able to participate (if her luggage made it this time). Emma Rosi-Marshall from Loyola University is a professor who had been working with Bob on the effects of flooding and other influences of the dams in Grand Canyon. She had also been involved with the nitrogen tracer work our groups were doing in the U.S. She was interested in advanced techniques to separate the nitrogen label from the sediments.
Emma’s recent project with Matt on the effects of genetically engineered corn on stream invertebrates had generated considerable interest in the press. The paper she wrote for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with her colleagues documented how the toxin engineered in corn to kill the corn borer can enter agricultural streams where it could harm caddis fly larvae. Caddis larvae are important members of the stream community. The agribusiness community was extremely unhappy with her results, and she was attacked for them.

The tactic is familiar. Rachael Carson wrote the famous book, Silent Spring, that brought to light the problems with pesticide use. She was attached personally after critics could not rebut her scientific reporting. Tommy Edmondson, a professor at University of Washington, documented the decline of Lake Washington from sewage pollution generated by cities in the Seattle area. He carefully presented the scientific facts and left the politics out of his public statements. His critics could not assail the science, so resorted to attacks on his character. Emma had experienced a similar backlash.

Emma had strong expertise on stream food webs, and was a welcome addition to the project. Emma is a very boisterous and enthusiastic woman who loves to talk and argue science. She is an original thinker, and driven to do the best research that can be done. She is a tireless worker who is difficult to keep up with. I can see how she complements Bob, because he is the typical absent minded academic, and Emma is organized and gets down to business. Now we had the benefit of this dynamic duo.

Matt’s new graduate student Amanda, was also participating; she and Piet were already down in Panama working and she would stay and do the long term work after the rest of us returned to the US. As I would find out, Amanda was quite the character and had fantastic experience doing field work in streams.

A fantastic array of frogs

What is it about frogs and popular culture? They seem to be a very fashionable small animal. Unlike insects or snakes, almost everybody likes frogs. It could be that there is not a natural aversion toward frogs because they will generally not bother you if you don’t bother them. Human’s evolutionary history does not include natural selection for avoidance of frogs like it does for avoidance of snakes. A frog jumping underfoot seen out of the corner of the eye catches attention. A snake slithering through the grass underfoot caught with the corner of the eye causes me to jump. Some princesses are even willing to kiss frogs (not a snake or a rat, but a frog, yes).

Some species of frogs have extremely potent toxin in their skins (the legendary poison dart frogs), but it is only dangerous if you eat or touch them. So, while we have a long evolutionary history of avoiding more aggressive toxic snakes and spiders, there is no similar danger from frogs through human history. Frogs have big eyes, and seem mostly un-threatening. Better yet, there are fantastically colored and shaped frogs that are fascinating to anybody who appreciates the natural world. Frog enthusiasts may not be as common as bird lovers, but there are plenty of them out there.

This attraction to frogs makes it all the more ironic that they are disappearing from under our very noses. If all the ticks and chiggers were disappearing, I would have difficulty working up as much emotion over it.

I asked Scott Connelly to send me pictures of frogs from the El Valle forests, and those that were dying from the disease in Panama. I had not seen many of these frogs when I was in Panama before because some are quite rare or active in other seasons. Still, I was curious about what was being lost. Scott is also deeply affected by the extinctions. He takes any chance he can to give public lectures using his extensive collection of photographs. He is surprised by how few people know about these frog extinctions, including other biologists. My experience parallels his on this score.

What Scott finds most amazing about these frogs is the astonishing diversity of form and function. For example reproductive strategies vary widely among species. Some frogs simply lay their eggs and leave, others care for the young. Male poison dart frogs of some species keep the eggs they fertilize on leaves wet by bringing water from nearby pools or tree holes. When the eggs hatch these males then transport the tadpoles on their backs to a suitable small pool and release them there to mature. Some frog species live in trees, others only on the ground. They all have different diets or other variations in their way of life.

Bufo coniferous is the green climbing toad found in El Valle. The adult looks like a typical warty (but attractive) greenish toad, but as a juvenile, it has brilliant red dots on its “warts”. Another member of the same genus, Bufo haematiticus is the blackbelly toad. This toad is light tan or grey on top and dark brown on bottom, with an attractive mottling of dark and light brown on the inside of its legs. It is thought to be abundant and not in much threat of extinction, but the chytrid was recently found to infect this species in high altitude areas.

Then there is Cochranella euknemos, the San Jose chochran frog. It is a pleasing, small, light green frog with all black eyes and a body covered with tiny neon yellow dots. This frog lives near streams in the vegetation and its populations are declining according to the Global Amphibian Assessment.

And there are more- Eleutherodactylus musous is a small, green, splotched frog that has protrusions of green and brown all over its body, and looks more like a clump of moss than a frog. Up to now this adaptation has aided the species survival because the camouflage helps it escape predation. This adaptation will do it no good against the chytrid. This frog only lives in the mountains of Panama and will probably go extinct from the disease. One cousin of this frog, Eleutherodactylus bufoniformis, the rusty robber frog, is an inch long round bodied animal that lies very flat to the ground. It has a splotchy skin that makes it look like a rock in the bottom of the stream or in the forest where it sits completely camouflaged.

There are even more colorful frogs. Rana warszewitchii, the brilliant forest frog, lives close to streams in forested areas and its tadpoles develop in the streams. It has a short trilled soft call. This forest frog is slender and brown with bright green splotches on its back, a yellow stripe in its groin and two bright yellow spots on the backs of its upper hind legs. One side of the bottom of each back leg is brown with black spots and the other side is pinkish red. It truly is a brilliant forest frog.

The coronated tree frog, Anotheca spinosa has striking strips of silver and pearl on its sides. It looks like a cross between a grey zebra and a triceratops dinosaur. It is three or four inches long, with bone spines on its neck; supposedly these spines are used to fight other male frogs to defend breeding holes high in the trees. After breeding, the female continues to return to the hole and lay additional eggs. The earlier batch of larvae consumes the eggs that the female lays. Presumably the purpose of the later eggs is to feed the earlier tadpoles.

Hemiphractus fasciatus is a 3 inch, buff, tan-colored, horned tree frog, with a flat five-pointed head. It has irregular splotchy bumps over its body. This frog looks more like a leaf than an animal. Initially scientists could not keep it alive in culture until they figured out it only eats other frogs. The habit of eating other frogs explains why it is only found in areas with high densities of other frogs. This frog does not need standing water to breed, although it is found in extremely humid forests, because the eggs are carried on the back of the female.

The jungle around Rio Maria is also the habitat of Dendrobates auratus, the green and black poison dart frog. These frogs have active males that sing a trilling note while perched on twigs or rocks above the ground. If multiple females are attracted they wrestle each other to mate with the male.

This is a personal favorite because we have some as family pets in aquaria at home and at work. We purchased frogs that were bred by a co-worker in the US, but unwittingly contributed to pet frog collection just by buying them. It is possible that much of the spread of the chytrid disease is caused by the pet trade in frogs. Furthermore, some species of frogs have been collected toward extinction for the pet and zoo trade. While this may be a way to preserve species, rarely are adequate records kept of collection location and breeding lines, so the genetics of the frogs is not preserved.

Dendrobates minutus, is the blue-bellied poison frog. This tiny frog is one of the few poison dart frogs that is not collected for the pet trade. It is a beautiful frog with alternating yellow and black stripes along its entire body. It has bright blue spots on its lower belly.

The above are only a few of the more than hundred species of frogs that could be found at El Valle. The main remaining species of frogs from this area now are in quarantined aquaria or have populations that also occur in lower, warmer elevation areas where the disease apparently is not fatal.

Lessons from extinctions

Frog extinctions from the chytrid fungus are particularly troublesome because there is literally nothing that be done to stop them. Helplessness is a bad feeling, particularly for a scientist. Generally, a scientist thinks that we can control much of our world through knowledge. Species out of the wild can be propagated. If there is no way for them to survive in the wild, then they are doomed to be caged creatures. Somehow, animals in zoos do not seem the same to me.

I have mixed feelings about captive animals. A recent visit I made to an aquarium with extensive coral reef fish exhibits illustrates the paradox. I was thinking how much more I enjoyed seeing fish in the wild by scuba diving or snorkeling. Then it occurred to me that the resources used for me to travel to a coral reef were tremendous, and that the environmental damage would be immense if each of the visitors to the aquarium traveled to see all these fishes in their native habitat. The educational value of having these fish available for public viewing is high. Still, an animal or plant that only exists in zoos or botanical gardens seems more like a collector’s item than anything relevant to the natural world. For many of the frog species that are threatened by the chytrid disease, life in captivity is the only way the species will avoid complete extinction.

The El Valle Amphibian Rescue Center is attempting to save 1000 animals from 40 species. They are concentrating on 15 priority species now, and building capacity to save more. The center started in the same hotel (Campsetre) where we stayed. Heidi and Edguardo felt they had to do something, and rented rooms to set up aquaria in them. They collected frogs from areas where the disease had not invaded. They experimented with ways to kept the caged frogs from getting the disease, including washing with Clorox solutions, and heavy use of disinfectants of any materials that entered the area from outsize.

Since then, the El Nispero Zoo at El Valle de Antón and a number of US zoos (notably the Houston zoo and the Atlanta zoo) and conservation agencies have supported building a center to house the animals. The Houston Zoo manages contributions to frog conservation efforts.

In captivity, each frog must be kept quarantined from any materials that might bring the disease into their cages and as far as is known can never be released into the wild. To make the job even more difficult, it is not possible to maintain just a few frogs of each species because a minimum amount of genetic diversity is necessary to save a species. So, many individuals of each species must be housed. Furthermore, little is known about the mating and food requirements for many of the species, so research into these details is required.

Edgardo and Heidi were the first local collaborators (they became closer collaborators when they got married) on the conservation project, and now several zoos have pitched in to consult and provide financial support. Many hours of work a day at the Rescue Center are required to keep the frogs healthy including collecting the insects that each species needs to survive. Before the Rescue Center gained the ability to culture them in the lab, these insects had to be collected from the wild.

The golden frogs like termites, and many of the other frogs like cicadas, crickets, or other insects. The very small frogs need fruit flies or other tiny insects. A huge amount of work goes into cleaning cages, treating sick frogs, quarantining frogs that have been collected, keeping track of where each frog came from and recording breeding activity. This last is important to avoid inbreeding on one hand and to avoid breeding what might be distinct sub-species from different areas on the other.

Videos were coming out on the frog extinctions and the rescue center. I saw interviews of Edgardo, and pictures of the facilities and Heidi and Edgardo collecting insects to feed the frogs. Soon I would be able to visit and see for myself.

What are the lessons from the Panamanian frog extinctions? One is that diseases can wipe out species before people can find a cure. We are part of the natural world and are not exempt from the generalization. A disease could arise that kills much or all of humanity. With rapid air travel, pandemic’s are more likely. With more contact with wild animals, the probability increases that an animal disease will jump to humans. When people live in close contact with livestock (particularly pigs and waterfowl) development of diseases is particularly likely. It is not impossible that one of these diseases will be lethal enough to sweep through humanity causing mass mortality. If it can happen to frogs, it might happen to us.

Another lesson from the frog extinctions is that we need to preserve the species we can because we will lose many anyway from the unintended consequences of human activity. As already stated, humans are causing massive extinctions. If some of those can be avoided, the unintended extinctions we cause will have less of an overall impact on the planet’s diversity.

A third lesson is that we should not introduce species to other habitats (such as the African Clawed Frog) because there is always the potential for unintended harm. Species introductions have caused damage to numerous species and are in important factor in endangerment of many species. The chitryd and the frogs may be the most extreme example of a single introduction leading to extinction of 10’s to 100’s of species, but the lesson is an important one. These lessons still seem to me to be small comfort in the face of the loss of hundreds of frog species from our planet.