16.June.2016 (Day 11)

The frogs of wrath

Last night while driving I came across quite a site. There was a mass migration even taking place and I can honestly say I’ve never seen so many frogs at one time.

These were some real plagues of Egypt numbers.

It’s raining frogs

The picture doesn’t do true justice to their numbers, at one point there was more frogs than dirt out in front of the car. I was driving at a snails pace or slower trying not to run over any. Lucky for me, and them mostly, they were pretty quick to hop out of the way. 

I’ve been told that the small ponds they normally live in are probably all dried up and they’re moving towards the dam wall to find a new place to live.

Dahl’s aquatic frog (Litoria dahlia)

These frogs might be able to eat cane toad eggs and tadpoles which is good news. Although the jury is still out on whether or not they can actually survive. 

The coolest thing about them is the crazy noise they make when you pick 'em up.

Somewhere between a scream and a high pitched cackle.

Apparently they make this noise to attract owls when they’re getting attacked. The idea is that if a predator, let’s say a snake, grabs one of the frogs they can make this noise to attract an owl to eat the snake.

It’s a good story, but I’m pretty skeptical.

True to the trend so far, I also found the smallest example of a giant snake.

I think I have some type of gift/curse

Carpet python (Morelia spilota)

They can grow up to 3 meters (~10 feet) and weigh 15 kilos (33 pounds). Similar to the children’s pythons I work with they’re really good mums too, they coil around their eggs and use small muscle twitches to generate heat and keep the eggies at the perfect temperature until they’re ready to hatch.

I'm ready for my close-up Mr. Brusch

The daytime routine is chugging along quite nicely. It feels good to have all the experiments under way.

My dissertation work at ASU focuses on the interplay between hydration and immune performance. Coming to Australia was a perfect chance to apply what I’ve learned to conservation efforts trying to understand/stop/hamper the cane toad invasion.

They were actually purposefully introduced to the tropical north-east coast of Australia to try to eat the cane beetle which is a pest of sugar cane.

They didn’t eat the beetle, wupps.

They also started spreading like wildfire because there aren’t any native predators that can stomach their toxic secretions. It was always assumed that they’d be confined to the Australian tropics (they’re native to the Central and South American tropics) because the rest of the country is too hot/dry.

Double wupps.

Enter: my research. 

I want to know if toads moving into drier and drier regions have an immune system that can tolerate life with less water. Cane toad work here has been a real hot topic (bad pun, sorry) and it seems like the general consensus is they’ll never get rid of them, but we can try to limit the destruction they cause.

There was talk once of introducing a parasite that is found in the native range of toads.

Come on guys, no triple-wupps please.

Over the eight weeks I’ll be here I’m going to four different sites that represent the chronological spread of the toads and habitats with different amounts of free water standing in the environment (but more on that later).

At each site I collect 30 toads from the wild. Ten of them get their blood drawn out in the field (for immune function tests) while the remaining 20 are brought back to the station and allowed to rehydrate.

Cane toads enjoying a nice bath

After they’ve soaked up some water, ten more have blood drawn and the remaining ten are put into little buckets without food or water while they dry out for a few days (it looks like 3.5 days is the magic dehydration number).

Cane toad solitary confinement

The idea is to get samples from free ranging toads, hydrated toads,and dehydrated toads.

From four different places.

I’ve got my work cut-out for me.

Being out in the middle-of-nowhere with no TV, radio, endless shopping malls, etc. is big departure from what I’ve grown accustomed to in Phoenix.

 After a while it gets pretty nice (I do miss Netflix and the occasional bliss of music though…)

Work-life balance is definitely a challenge out here.

 It’s important I stop to smell the flowers and take a break every once in a while.

Yellow flame tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum)