Captian's Log, Day 71: Today I accompanied Fausto, one of the herpetologists working for the Conservation Center for Amphibians at Amaru (CCA), to various construction sites within the city of Cuenca. We were looking for one species of frog that is endemic to the area, and highly threatened: Hyloxalus vertebralis. There are four focal species in their current rescue efforts in and around Cuenca. It's truly incredible that at midday, when the smog from the traffic is peaking and the sun is high, that these frogs are still singing from people's backyards and abandoned, grassy lots...
A day of field work to find and monitor these guys got me antsy for my next field job in Mindo. If you can read Spanish or use google translate, there is more about the amphibian conservation project on Amaru's website:
http://zoologicodecuenca.com/conservacion/.
If you've been reading my other posts, you may have also heard me mention that biologists have been doing surveys of native insect, plant, amphibian, bird and mammal life here in Amaru since 2001. Ernesto and others have published a guide to Cuencan and Cajas wildlife with ETAPA, if you ever get the chance to read it and/or visit Cuenca.
Follow me and Fausto for a day of field biology.
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| This was the street where we parked to investigate our first site, to give you an idea of exctly how urban they really are. |
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| Most of these sites are future construction areas. CCA has permission and funding to investigate as many of them as they can for endemic frog species. If they find a population of these frogs, they will take them to their rescue center at Amaru, screen them for Chytrid, and possibly relocate them to a safer site. |
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| If people use the construction site for dumping trash, old paint, and old appliances, Fausto told me it is less likely to have frogs. There was plenty of trash at our first site. |
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| Fausto, looking for frogs. |
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| ...still some gorgeous Cuencan insects, though. |
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| Sadly, we found none at this site. This may have been because it hasn't rained in almost two weeks now; the CCA herpetologists visit a single site multiple times in different conditions before they declare it free of frogs. |
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| Our second site was located on a hill behind someone's house. |
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| They gave us their permission to check it out. |
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| There was a small garden and a few cows grazing in the yard. |
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| ...the sound of the frogs calling, given just a little shade and a runoff creek, was incredible. |
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| Hyloxalus vertebralis. |
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| We checked each of the frogs we caught for chytrid. For those of you who aren't aware, Chytrid is a fungus associated with global climate change that is currently wiping out the world's amphibian populations at an alarming rate. Read a bit more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycota |
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| Gravid female... |
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| ...and a male with tadpoles on his back! The males carry the tadpoles around after they hatch. One of my favorite amphibian behaviors. |
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| On top of the satisfaction of working for conservation efforts to save these incredible flora and fauna...Fausto and I love what we do because it's our job to run around catching frogs. |
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| When we had around 15 individuals (including two gravid females and two males with tadpoles), we headed back to CCA. |
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| So many more sites to visit in this town. The herpetologists work every day.... |
And they could use your help, if you're interested in working with them.
Interested? E-mail me at nbecich
@gmail.com.
They also do a lot of work with Atelopus frogs: sometimes venturing to the Amazon and east of Ecuador as well.
Just one more amazing facet of Amaru life.
Cheers, all.
-Nikki
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