Aquarium of the Podcific: Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog

4:44PM Aug 1, 2023

Speakers:

Erin Lundy

Madeline Walden

Keywords:

frogs

amphibians

animals

tadpoles

species

toads

eat

aquarium

people

trout

cool

mountain

waterways

live

habitat

legged frogs

happened

yellow

grow

ecosystem

Hi, I'm Erin Lundy.

And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific. A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Podcific. Southern California's largest aquarium.

Join us as we learned alongside the experts in animal care, conservation and more.

Welcome back to Aquarium of the Podcific. I'm Madeline Walden, the aquariums digital content and community manager.

And I'm Erin Lundy, conservation coordinator for mammals and birds and animal care specialists, especially,

especially specialists, which is the theme of our podcast today. Today we're going to talk about the mountain yellow legged frog and I'm so honored to have an incredible guest today. Her name is Erin Lundy. And she's also she's sitting right next to me.

So unfortunately, I will not be asking any questions. I hope you might know the answer to my questions,

some existential questions. What is a frog?

A frog is an amphibian I'm saying

you have to ask. Oh, sorry, I'm

sorry. Sorry. What is a frog? A frog is an amphibian. I also told Madeline to stop me if I ever get on it frog tangent that goes to your teeth. If I go into the frog hole, she will pull me back out

now I think you're great about communicating you know, I'm I'm not a science person. I don't have a background in science. I just have a background in Aquarium of the Podcific. This is awkward. This is awkward. I didn't so whenever you you're just so great about communicating in a way that's digestible, but also shows your passion for especially this project that you work so hard on. So I'm just really excited to hear it in depth and to learn along with our audience to learn to learn

about our mountain yellow legged frog and yellow legged frogs, Rana mosquito OSA

but this is also our last episode of the season. This is our 10th episode of our podcast. That's not over, don't

worry, we'll be back. It's been it's been a really great season. And we've had actually a lot of different guests on and I think that we've learned about both the animal care side of things from a lot of different keepers. If I had to choose what my favorite fact I learned this season was what would yours be? We've learned a lot we've learned

so much. I don't know I think just my favorite fact. And this isn't necessarily fact it's been watching you learn thing? Well, because I'm learning to you. But you're so visual with your like, literally like eyes open like need to take a breath like need to exit the room. They do start start off as to diamonds, and why are we talking about why is

there a 600 pound octopus? I still don't know the answer. And I have talked to a couple of our guests. And you know, people are in the aquarium who've given me feedback. And there are routinely surprised at how much we don't know. And I think it's really salient point that like people know a lot about the projects that they're particularly involved in. But it is difficult to know in depth information about every species that we have. Because we have so many

so many. I mean, we have 12,000 animals here. And we have specialists in every single field and every single kind of group of that. But something that is part of their day to day is mind blowing for someone else to hear specifically me. Exactly. So I think that's what's been so cool about the podcast is kind of just tricking our colleagues into talking about all the amazing stuff that they're doing.

It's been a trick. It's been a track. Record. No. I think that's like a violation. I don't think we can do that. Oscar? No, I think my favorite fact aside from the 600 pound octopus that I don't know if it's my favorite or just the most terrifying, scariest fact I love that sea turtles fat is green from all the green things they eat. And I really wonder what color my fat is based off.

And that's what we're going to find out today.

Today's episode is about dissecting and determining what she eats the most of that and then also that the octopus have nine brains. That's a lot of donut shaped a lot of rains. There's been a lot I've really liked getting sort of an inside look. Also Josh just like totally roasting us on our own. Yeah. If you guys haven't listened to the jelly episode, Josh is just like he has the driest humor. But he is such a good human too. And he's so smart about all jellies that even listening to the episode back was amazing for me. And I felt like I was learning again, because it's so complicated that I couldn't absorb that side of it, too

is going back and editing everything. I learned so much all over again. Or it's something I miss. I'm like, I wish I would have asked about that more. Like that's fascinating. So we're definitely going to have new people on next season, but let us know what your favorite episodes are. Let us know who your favorite speakers were. And we'd love to invite them back on to talk about No, no one one is done. That's it. That's all you get. No, but I feel like you know, we're so lucky to that our specialists that we've had on our specialists and other things. Yeah. And so I am looking forward to the future of this podcast alongside deal

and science education from people who are doing the work is like the exact niche that I am so interested in so valuable. It's been a good time. I'm so it's been one of the most fun experiences of things that I've done here because I get to learn so much about everything that's happening in today and you get to T today

you get to teach. So I'm gonna let Erin kind of run with this episode and just kind of interject in between, I guess Instagram questions, shoot.

We have no Instagram questions.

So I will I will play the role as Instagram today, which is what I typically do. Cool. Well, I'm so excited to get into this project. And to hear more about it. Um, I guess I'm just gonna pretend like I know nothing, which is pretty close to raags only about this specific mountain yell like

a lot about it. Because we're friends. I

know. We're friends. You're admitting that. Scratch that. Scratch that from the record. Cool. Well, let's get into the episode. Data that that the boom. Hi, Aaron, thank you so much for being our guest on Aquarium of the Podcific today.

Hi, Aaron. It's so nice to be me. It's very jarring because I'm so used to interviewing and having someone to like to pester. Yeah. And now I can't I'm being pestered yesterday and like, good way, I guess I'd have just gotten used to learning and not telling, not telling anyone. But I want to talk to you guys a little bit about a project that has really been sort of the defining project of my career. I, for a little background on me, started here at the Aquarium of five and a half years ago, wow, five and a half years ago, and I was hired on because of my experience with marine mammals and penguins. And obviously, frogs are neither.

Interesting journey from marine mammals and penguins, frogs, very, not necessarily polar opposites. But pretty close.

I just like things that sometimes are in water. And sometimes

that's true, penguins can be very amphibian like in that way.

So works out,

they just can't breathe down there.

Maybe they could try frog scan. And honestly, that's really what salt is their ability to absorb oxygen through the skin. But yeah, I got hired on to take care of totally different species. And similar, I think it was Brooke, that was saying that no one really has a linear career path when it comes to working with animals. And I think that five years ago, if you told me that I would be heavily with frogs, I would be very confused as to how I got there. But I started helping to cover some of our amphibian gallery and helping to just like provide coverage on the weekends. And as I kind of grew more and more in that role. And we also kind of concurrently were developing a partnership with USGS and some other institutions that were once USGS US Geological Survey. So that is a federal agency. And they are actually who holds a permit for our mountain yellow legged frog project. Thank you. So as we sort of developed these relationships, and started to think about our prospective involvement in this project, I sort of became one of the people who had the relevant experience. And it was actually me and one of my co workers who no longer works here, unfortunately, but in our soil wildlife Care Network, which is really cool. And so she gets pictures of almost daily, sorry, Frankie, shout out to Frankie, who is sort of my partner in the project's inception. But she and I worked really hard to make that project what it is. And now I'm hopeful that we can teach more people what a mountain yellow legged frog is, and why they should care about them, and also actually helped to save a species, which is pretty cool.

Did you have any background with frogs at all, or even an interest in frogs before this? Don't tell we don't have all of them.

I had no experience with amphibians like professionally, or personally, I get like I grew up in Hawaii. And there's not any native, it depends who you ask, considered not to be any native species of amphibians and why I mean, it's an island, right. And so there are invasives, there's like cane toads, there's Kochi frogs. And there are some poison dart frogs that were introduced that some people consider endemic, but that's its own thing. But I didn't grow up around a lot of amphibians, like they just didn't really exist. And I certainly liked the idea of them, but didn't know anything about them. And so starting here was sort of the first introduction I had to them. And I was so nervous starting to work with them. Because like, a sea lion if like, I don't know, something happens, like its water gets a little colder. It's fine. It's a mammal, it's creating its own heat. It's okay,

we kind of talked about that in our last episode with rain, you know, there's, you know, our marine mammals can withstand a two degree, depending on the weather outside versus, you know, endangered species like we have a permit to care for here, you know, that really can fluctuate,

yeah, and it was the most nerve wracking transition to take care of these like big things that are fine. Two little things that maybe aren't fine if you do something slightly wrong. And so there was a big learning curve for me because taking care Ervin Fabians is so significantly different than marine mammals or seabirds, or really anything that kind of regulates itself. And something I've come to learn to love about the amphibians is that they exists. So in harmony with their environment, that it's not really about caring for the individual animal, but ensuring that their habitat is clean and appropriate, and that they have everything that they need. And if their environment is generally healthy, the animals are generally healthy. And I think that's a really, that was the biggest thing I had to like, learn for myself is like, Hey, you can kind of fix almost anything for a frog if you keep everything clean and nice and healthy. And I don't know, I just, that's not the case for seals and sea lions, you know. So that's been really fun. But it's

not the case in the wild right now, unfortunately. And that's kind of, we'll get into why we are caring for these animals. So sadly, no, it's such a bummer.

But yeah, they they really live in harmony with their environment, and there is disharmonious, what's that word? There isn't harmony right now, because of some anthropogenic causes.

But what's anthropogenic, what's that mean?

Caused anthropogenic means human cause. And so a lot of people think that we live in the Anthropocene, which is just essentially, we've done so much to alter the way that the world works, that we are in a new era that is purely based off of all of the things that humans have done. And that's sort of disheartening to think about that we have done so much that it sort of overcome the natural processes of the world. But at the same time, I think it's also goes to show that humans have so much ability to change that there is hope, you know, like we did a lot of stuff, but we didn't know better at the time. And so now working to kind of rectify all those things and fix it, it's cool to see that we can have such a significant impact when we are trying,

can you name another example of something that we have done that with where there has been, you know, human caused issues, and we will have been able to reverse it? I'm not the expert on this at all. But I can think about the ozone and how that's actually a huge one. Yeah, the ozone is huge that you're an expert on this. But I know that, you know, holes in the ozone were a huge issue or the breakdown of our ozone was a huge issue. And they are will we're able to band The substances or the chemicals that cause gas CFCs Yes, thank you carbons. Period. And the ozone has been repairing itself. And I'm not the expert on this. So don't think you're kind of the expert. It's nothing that's that's my job here is to be the audience or again to ask you questions, like

they think it's a super pertinent example of like, how we can work to fix things that we've done. And to be honest, like we've done a lot of damage that we've already reversed. It's just that it's not recent. And so you're not thinking about it. But like, I'm in my master's program right now, one of the things that I'm so shocked routinely to learn about is how bad air quality was in especially California in like the 50s, where you literally there was like no days per year that it was healthy to go outside. And that's partially because of the geography of Southern California and like there's this airbase, and that traps all the pollutants, but we also weren't regulating pollutants in any significant way. That I think it was like last year's date or two years ago stated that there was only like one day where it was very unhealthy to go outside. Versus every other day. It's why

all those old 1950s We have that like yellow tint on it. The air is not the film, it's the air.

Look then yeah. And so I mean, there's things like that, right? Where we didn't even think about the effects that that was having on us. But like, if you talk to someone from who grew up in, you know, that time, they'd be like, yeah, the air was so bad. I could not go outside somedays. And I would like coffee all the time. And I was like, That sounds terrible. Like I never worried about that. And so we are working to fix things. And I think that now that we have more information for sort of obligated to undo a lot of the things that we've definitely done, and we are doing it and so that makes me feel hopeful, especially when you think about the fact that over 40% of amphibian species are either considered endangered or threatened, which means that their habitat and their populations are declining in some significant way. I am really sad for all the frogs, I'll never know

how many frogs are there.

There's a lot of frogs. There's a lot out there it is. A frog had to say it do it had to do to him. Um, but yeah. And so there's a lot of different species of frogs and I, I learned about frogs that existed that I won't ever meet because they're gone now. And one that's really cool. I know. It is a real bummer about it. I mean, like any species that's totally extinct. Now you're like, I wish I knew what that was. But there was a gastric brooding frog there was actually several gastric brooding frogs, but one very recently went extinct like within the last 20 years. That would just raise this baby in its tummy and it would just have a bunch of babies Oh, just crawl out of its mouth when they're ready. And that's cool.

Let's face

that's got you have to worry about it because it'll never happen again. Oh, I know. Sad, gastric brooding frogs are gone terrifying. And so to prevent me from having that experience over and over again, we should really be working to preserve species. But yeah, I mean, sometimes I think about all the amphibians that I will never get to meet. And that sounds really dorky. But there's so many amphibians that have cool adaptations and can produce these like substances that might have antibacterial properties. And there's, you know, these animals that play this huge role in their ecosystem, because most amphibians exist as like a larval stage in the water, where they're eating detritus and like stuff off the bottom of Titus, just like gunk, scientific word for gunk. And they'll eat algae. And so they become these like primary consumers of like whatever's growing. And then they go through metamorphosis, where their whole body changes. And they become these like terrestrial animals that mostly eat insects, or sometimes lizards. And so they connect the food web in such a different way than most animals do. Because they totally transform what they're eating and what they're doing over the course of their lifetime. That when you lose amphibians from those environments, you lose a lot of the interconnectivity, and it's just kind of weakens the strength of you know, that ecosystem. So I'll just never know some of these frogs. But mountain yellow legged frogs are the ones that we are specifically working to save here at the Aquarium. And that's a project that started before we got involved with it. We are now a partner in that project. But they have taken over my life, as Madeline knows, and they are one of the coolest frogs I've ever met. But there's nothing that's special about the before anyone asks nothing specifically, that's special about because I get that question. I have yellow legs, they do. But there's also a foothill yellow legged frog and a Sierra yellow legged frog. And so if you have one legged frogs, but and they're all pretty close related, but when people ask me why we're saving this specific species, you know, with sea otters, and with sunflower stars, it's really easy. Like that's a keystone species that is protecting the entire environment. And sometimes you look at one frog, and you're like, D if they were gone, like how would the ecosystem be impacted? And part of my reason, and the major reason is like, we did this, so we should be fixing it. And the other part is that like redundancy in any sort of ecological system is important for the health of that system. And so you want there to be multiple species of frogs, you want there to be, like adaptability to climate change and loss in different ways so that ecosystems can evolve as the world changes. And so if we lose a lot of those, like variables, and we lose a lot of those species, we're not going to see ecosystems bounce back the way that they should, when there are climate related impacts or other things that happen to those habitats.

Well, let's talk about you know, so we know that this species isn't necessarily integral to its ecosystem. But what role do amphibians play in their ecosystems?

Yeah, so they, like I said earlier, are usually just kind of a part of this trophic web that connects a lot of different animals together. And so they're part of the food chain is not really a good analogy, a food web is a better analogy. And they allow there to be food and prey, but also predators for a lot of different species because of how diverse their diet is over the course of their life. And also amphibians, some people say they can be sort of ecological indicators of the health of an ecosystem. I don't always agree with that. And, as it turns out, frogs are much harder than you think they are. I should have known that five years ago when I started working with them, and I panicked every time I do anything. But if you think about how they've evolved over millions of years, they live now in desert ecosystems. They live now in like totally aquatic ecosystems. There's totally aquatic frogs, there's amphibians everywhere. And I think that's really cool that they are hardy enough, and they can evolve so rapidly to adapt to change that's happening around them. But in the same vein, if you have a lot of chemicals in the water, you're gonna kill frogs. So in that way, it can be a really good indicator of the health of their overall environment. Very cool.

What's the difference between an amphibian and reptile?

That's a good question. So they are both considered herb tiles or herps. But amphibians are, they have permeable skin? They don't typically have scales, although there's a couple exceptions to that. I think a couple of species of Sicilians have scales. Yeah, and they are mostly fossorial and terrifying. Don't look them up.

We have some Sicilians here we do we have aquatic Sicilians which have no scales, and what they look like sock puppet is they're really cute they're really good do not Google what the inside of their mouth looks like. And if you need to you can but it's really scary.

So if you're driving listening to this or you're if you're if you're stationary somewhere not driving, why would you say I don't want to drive driving? I don't want to when he's driving and look at your put a note in your brain to look that up later because I guess it's terrifying and can't wait to see it. Do not look it up. If you're driving, put a note in your brain. Pause this episode now.

I think it's type one, it is Natanz, but look up aquatic Sicilian mouth. Ooh,

do I get Just quiz you on species names what's manually good frog species

name random mosquito so if I didn't know that it would all be over for me though.

The mic the mic. She's canceled. Scott what happened?

Oh the mouth. Let's see it. Yeah, ah, that's what it looks like. Yeah. Easily spooky

near that's, that's more than a little

spooky aquatic facility is really cool.

So beautiful.

Apparently the fossil real Sicilians that have scales are even scarier, and I am scared even Google them, so I wouldn't do it. But I mean, it was like a big warm but yeah, what other what other quizzes?

I don't know what I don't know. Like, magnificent tree run into that. Yeah,

those are litoria splendi to sit with Tori about Sonoran Desert toad. I'm

thinking of the animals we have here. Silly assault various. Exactly. That's gonna say

what about easily fooled, but they've changed how they classify toads. Bufo bufo Bufo

what other frogs do I know Scott? What

frogs do you know? spring peepers. We get a lot of those in Pennsylvania papers. I don't know what they're gonna look up. But their thing is wrong. I mean, I've seen them. I don't think I know what their course frogs. Oh, there's today, Chris, of course. But we have today, Chris, which one do we have? We have civic tree frogs, which are seated crates. Anyway, that's kind of cool. Rocks metamorphose? No, some are direct developers, which is sort of interesting in and of itself. So the key Hansi spray Toad, which I recognize is instead of frog bait, the common names always mess everything up. But they are direct developers. And so when they give birth, they just give birth to a tiny little version of themselves. And it is very cute. If you ever want to see the cutest little thing in the entire world, look up Qian seaspray, toads which are native to Tanzania, but and then also look up how small their babies are. Because it'll be a little babies right? Back. Adorable. But those guys actually have, I think, the smallest geographic footprint of any animal on the entire planet because they only live in the spray of the key Hansi waterfall in Tanzania. And then they dammed the waterfall and turns out all that spray was super important for them to live. And so this population of amphibians went extinct in the wild. But thankfully they had been some of them had been collected for a captive assurance colony, which essentially means that there are going to be some genetics that they retain, so they can breed them and hopefully reintroduce them. And they've been successfully ranchers re introducing these animals for a while. So that's kind of cool.

That is so wild to think that something that can be something so important to them, like the spray of this waterfall, you know, and we don't know until we remove it. And then the unfortunately it goes extinct in the wild. That's Yep. So like think about an animal like the axolotl, that, from my understanding is only found in one, one lake and one like Yeah, exactly. And so here's something even more specific to this one waterfall.

They're just a little less cute than Axolotl. A little less. But when they are I mean, the direct developers, they I mean, just them popping out as a tiny Toad from the mom is very cute. And I was lucky enough to see a couple of them in person at the Detroit zoo, where they are part of the conservation work for the county spray toad. And I was just so enamored by how tiny the little baby toads were, and how many of them because under the right conditions are actually great readers and they do really well. It's just that they had dammed the waterfall and they didn't realize the impact that that was going to have on these animals. So I think it's small changes that we don't necessarily think are going to cause problems.

And I wonder how long it took them to adapt to that waterfall in order to probably so exactly like we live here forever. I guess we had been a part of this thing. And then it's removed. It's like guess we gotta

go. I guess it's all over us. So it is interesting. I think they've part of what they were doing conservation wise to help preserve the spray toads was they installed Mr. systems along the waterfall because I think the dam was a hydroelectric dam. Like I do think there was a purpose for it. But I know that they're trying to do things to help rectify, like and fix what they had removed. And I think that the spray helps. So those are interesting animals in themselves. But speaking of small things that we don't realize are going to damage an entire population, maybe talking about manual legged frogs. Now,

I have one question right. Before we get into that, what's the difference between a toad and frog?

It's complicated, it usually toads have thicker skin and are a little bit bumpier and worthier, and usually frogs have more smooth skin. Usually toads sort of walk, they can walk a little bit more than frogs typically do, and frogs will mostly hop and there's a couple of different things like toads tend to inhabit slightly drier habitats and frogs tend to be more aquatic. But I'm using these words because they diverged a while ago and there's frogs and there's toads but they can adapt to live in a bunch of different environments. And so Panamanian golden frogs are a perfect example. They look like a frog. They were called a frog. But then they realized that they're toads. And so although they're called frogs, they're actually toads. And so it's sort

of in so much of that in every single Yeah, family of animal that we've talked about. And I think

it's sort of like, becomes one of those things that there's not a great one way to tell versus the other. But usually, if you see something sort of like wide and bumpy is a toad

is isn't it? Like all frogs or toads, all toads are frogs. Now, they're just

they're separate things, which is interesting. I think they all fall under anurans. And so the order in Euro is frogs and toads. And those are two separate things. Understand, cool.

All right, let's talk about

my favorite frogs. So my yellow legged frogs are one of those perfect examples of humans changing something in their habitat that we didn't realize was going to cause a huge issue for them. So at one point, and these frogs live in like pristine alpine environments, they live in fishless waterways. They live in areas where the water is coming from snowmelt. So fish never made it all the way up there. And they can live at altitudes of like 1000 to 12,000 feet super high up. And so they're also cold weather frogs, which is weird to think about. But regardless, and so there's these mountain frogs, and then people in the 1800s started settling around California. And they were like, hey, you know, it'd be really cool if we could do some fishing. And they started introducing trout, specifically, I think rainbow trout, to the waterways where the mountain yellow legged frogs lived. And it turns out, trout eat everything. And so between the 1800s, and about the 1960s, or 70s, when they were still doing these trout introductions, they didn't realize that all of the tadpoles of the mountain yellow legged frogs were just being sucked up shroud that were on there. And fun fact about mountain yellow legged frogs is they can take up to four years to get out of the water and metamorphose and they spend a really long time as a tadpole, especially if it's a little bit colder that year, and they're not getting the nutrients that they need. So there would be these like, super plump four year old tadpoles just chillin in the water, and then these trout would come around and just eat all of them. So it was a bit that's devastating

to their populations take so long for them to even get to a point that they're coming out of the water, and then they're just being served up before they even get there. So I'm assuming that really led to their extinction pretty quickly.

It was a major cause of decline. And, you know, at one point, everything I've read says that they used to be the most populous vertebrate in their entire range at the time that they weren't being all eaten. And, you know, if you read like old school textbooks, a lot of them were like, you couldn't go five feet without seeing a mountain, yellow legged frog. And I was like, that's cool. And to think now, like, that's not the case, there are estimated to be less than 200 reading age adults in the wild. And I went on a field trip specifically to see them at a site where we knew that they existed. And we still only saw like five, and they were all juveniles. And none of them were adult. I've never seen an adult of this species that I worked so closely with, which is crazy to think about. But yeah, so trout was a major cause of decline. And you know, any sort of introduced predator, or introduced species is going to have impacts that we don't necessarily think about. Like, we're just like, we want to go fishing, here's some trout. And these animals have long streams, they've never had predators in their waterways, because they evolved in a fishless system that all of a sudden, these these trout that are just come in and eat the little tadpoles. So that was a major cause of decline. And when they realized that, they were like, we should probably do something about this. So they started working to reverse that. And they started doing trout removal and specific sites, and actually saw the population bounce back. And it was really exciting because like, okay, it's the trout. That's the problem.

When would you say this was about?

I think they started doing that in the late 70s, or 80s, but don't quote me on that. And they're still doing trout removal to this day for some of these habitats, like there are still like invasive trout species that are in waterways where they shouldn't be. And so part of making the habitat suitable for mountain yellow legged frogs, again, is to drown and out of the water. And unfortunately, it's never good news for the trout, but

trout doing okay,

the trout are fine. As a species, it's

fine overall,

but they weren't supposed to be in those places. And so I think that, you know, that was something that really was one of the first things that we did to help this species and coming back a little bit. They did and they were they were doing okay, they were like, okay, cool, like a few years later, once stupid tadpoles, got out of the water, and really took their sweet time. Then they started seeing mountain frogs again. And then it wasn't until the 90s that they started describing this massive loss of amphibians worldwide. And everyone's like, what's going on? And apparently, it was at some conference that scientists came together and they're like, this is the species that I primarily study, and I can't find it anywhere and other people were having the same experience where they come up to each other And they'd be like, I also can't find my species anywhere where there's like only two individuals where previously there were 1000s of abundance. Yeah. And it turns out that there has been a disease process that has been attacking amphibians worldwide. And it is a fungal disease called Katroo to mycosis caused by battery coke Katrien dendrobatidis, which is also known as BT or chytrid fungus, and we didn't really know a lot about it until the late 90s. And, like the early 2000s, we were studying it much more closely. And it turns out that these massive amphibian die offs around the world were all tied to the same fungus, which is weird. Yeah. And so, they've done some research to figure out what happened and why. And chytrid is basically implicated in the decline of most amphibian species. I think there are very few that show any sort of like resistance to it. And it's sort of a bummer. I mean, like, it's not something we talked about, but it is a huge disease process that is wiping out this incredibly diverse, you know, range of animals

to questions. Is it affecting any other species besides amphibians that you know of,

um, as far as I know, it's not anything besides amphibians, but it is frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, like it's all amphibians, there's also B cell which is metrical Kitri. Him Salamandre horns, which is a very sounds like, smell, Salamander. But that one is a slightly different, similar fungus like same genus, but causes slightly different issues. But both funguses attack the skin of the amphibians. And so the reason I'm not quite sure if it affects anyone else is because what it does is it attacks My second question is, yeah, it attacks the keratinized portion of the skin. And so this little fungus will settle in to the old skin, and then it'll start kind of like eating at the keratin essentially, of their skin, and their body's immune reaction is to just thicken up their skin. And so you get these animals, where if you take like a microscope slide of what's happened, you just see these areas of like extremely abnormal thickening of the epidermis. And it doesn't sound that crazy, except that when you think about how frogs and toads regulate their, like, electrolyte balance and like hydration, right, it's through their skin. And so it can impact the respiration, it can impact their ability to take in water when they need to, it impacts their ability to sort of be in balance with their environment move,

even if they're uncomfortable areas of thick skin. Yeah,

I never had an uncomfortable area. 60 I don't actually. That's like, but I mean, I'm making light of a very sad situation, because I have to, but yeah, it causes all of these problems and like, their electrolyte imbalance then makes their organs fail and also makes their muscles not work. And so, very characteristic signs of chytrid fungus in frogs would be, you know, frogs sit like all kind of like scooched up with their legs poised ready to bounce at any moment. They'll sit with their legs all the way kind of relaxed back. And it looks weird. If you see frogs doing that is unfortunately, probably not a good sign. But it also causes mortality pretty rapidly in populations. And so they had seen this bounce back at Mountain frogs after they started removing trout. And they're like, We did it. And then I think it was in the 90s and early 2000s, they started going to these historic mountain yellow legged frog sites, and they would just find waterways full of dead frogs. And I mean, frogs came pretty fast, which means that those had just died also. And yeah, I can't even imagine being someone who's like, I'm going out to study my species of interest, and they're all dead and walking up there and knowing how much work you did to restore a species and then seeing that must be so devastating. So not to be too much of a bummer. It's still out there and it's still pretty bad. And do we know

what causes chytrid fungus is that

it's caused by the fungus, but we think that it was spread worldwide. It's complicated. And there's different theories. Some genetic tests think that it may be originated in Asia. But there is you can like trace it back to Europe and Africa also. So there's a lot of different places around the world. One of my favorite stories is a little bit of a messed up story about one of the probable causes of chytrid spread one it was bullfrogs because people like eating frog legs, and they started shipping bullfrogs around the world to eat them. And it turns out worldwide trade of amphibians will cause disease spread like no one's business, and Bullfrogs are slightly resistant to it. And so they could be carriers be shipped to a different country around the world. Yeah. And then if they escape or lead out or interact with native populations in any way, or just get into a waterway, that fungus can cause spores that end up in the water, the spores are modal, and will go towards the chemicals that come off of a frog. And then they'll settle in that frog and spread and spread and spread. And so as soon as they spread, like settled, they create more spores that then go back out into the water. And so it's extremely contagious. And so it's not just like frog, the frog contact that will cause it, it's just being in the same way. Which is terrifying, terrifying. But the funny story if and it's only funny because it's so weird is in the 1940s, there was something called the hug bins test. That was a type of pregnancy test. And I was Xenopus laevis, which I think is the African clawed frog was used as a pregnancy test by injecting the urine of a pregnant woman into the frogs back. And the presence of whatever hormone indicated pregnancy would cause this frog to express all of these eggs and like spheres, and it was a surprisingly accurate pregnancy test. Despite being horrible. For the frog, I think they were probably one time use. If I had to guess like, I don't really know how to impact. There's not a lot of data on how it impacted the frogs. I don't think it's great. You can't usually inject pee into something and have it be fine. But because it was so effective as a pregnancy test, these African clawed frogs started being shipped worldwide, because this is the most accurate pregnancy test like 98% effective. And so they started shipping these animals all around the world. And those animals also are carriers of chytrid fungus. And so between the two things in between, you know, us moving and being a little bit more international and sort of international trade developing over the last century or so. It was bound to happen, but man, it is devastating.

Okay, so where are we at today with the with the species and its population in the wild

mountain yellow legged frogs, so many frogs? So yeah, we think that there are less than 200 breeding aged adults in the wild. And I think that's sort of the best way to measure population status, because you can measure juveniles but they take a few years to reach maturity to and so there's almost no point in knowing how many individuals there are total unless they're also contributing to creating more individuals. It's not too many. They've had chytrid, they've had the trout. And then most recently, in sort of, unfortunately, just the cherry on top is all of the things that have come along with climate change in California. And so we had a pretty bad fire that happened in 2020, that essentially 90 to 95% of the remaining usable habitat for the mountain yellow legged frogs go burned up. And it's only funny to me, because I'm so familiar with it that I'm like, man, they are, Alex Yeah,

you have to laugh,

otherwise they'll cry. But after that fire, I guess if you could say the silver lining is that that sort of really catalyzed our involvement with the mountain Nola get frog project, because there were these tadpoles that they rescued from the fire, that they were like, these guys need home. And so we accelerated our timeline for being part of the project to accommodate this. So this project already existed before this fire with other institutions. Yes, and it was in our, I think, vague plan of the future to be involved with. And, you know, obviously COVID happened. And that was not ideal for any institution and sort of halted some of our development in this program. But when this fire happened, it really did sort of catapult us into we should really be involved sooner. And so we received the first year that we were involved with mountain yellow get frogs, we got 150, captive bred tadpoles from LA Zoo, who's an amazing partner in this project. And they have adults mountain yellow legged frogs, that they will go through the process of breeding, and then they would have tadpoles, and to Headstart the tadpoles, like I said, could take up to four years. And so they have other institutions that are partners that receive the tadpoles and grow them up. Under the right conditions, they can metamorphose in about a year. So it's not that crazy of a commitment when you're providing them all the things that they need. But they gave us 150 Of those, and he was 125 Fire deadbolt that they're like these guys almost died in a wildfire. You guys are gonna take care of them now. And we're like, this is our first time ever doing this. And then like these are wild, collected and extremely genetically valuable. But the challenge was accepted on our behalf. And we successfully raised so many of those animals. So we released 188 Frogs last year. And to me that is significant. When you think about the 200 breeding age adults are remaining in the wild. 188 is a huge impact essentially doubled their population for like a day probably. I'm hopeful that their recruitment rate is pretty good, but we don't know. Right? Like

we have to be realistic about it. Right? Yeah. All right. So are they do they currently have predators?

I mean, yeah, they've got predator. I mean, there's trout in some of the waterways, although I'm pretty sure where they're releasing them doesn't. I'm actually not even allowed to know why. Yeah. Which is kind of cool in and of itself,

but it is in Southern California. A lot to say that. Yeah, these

guys are native to the population that we have are from the San Gabriel mountain range. And I mean, good luck finding them. But they are in the st. Gabriel's. And this population is at least and so we have some more tadpoles We're raising up and hopefully releasing pretty soon maybe by the time this podcast episode is even out, maybe

what should you do? If you see a mountain you're like,

please leave it alone, do not set fire to its habitat do not pass go do not collect, you know, I

mean, Jen Do not let the frogs give you $200 That is their money

if they can pick it up and eat it. They are they they live in large here. But I think if you see those animals and I think something to be, I don't know, a good steward of any amphibian environment has to be extremely cognizant that chytrid is a super contagious disease, and it's caused by fungus spores. And so if you are hiking through habitat of different amphibians, and you regularly do that, maybe just disinfect your shoes when you get home and like be more mindful of how you might actually be spreading disease processes when you walk through these places. Because you could ask anyone I know I will go out herping all the time. I love finding frogs, I love her Venus herping is going to find herb tiles, which are reptiles and amphibians, I'm sorry about that. It's a very weird name, don't explain it. But you know, I specifically will go to try to find them in their natural habitat one because I think they're cool. But two, it gives me such a better understanding of what I'm trying to replicate if we have them here and like how to meet their needs. And what I think they're just really cute. And so seeing what natural behaviors they might be displaying that I want to give them the opportunity to display and seeing where they live. And so seeing mountain yellow legged frogs in their habitat gave me so much context to what I'm doing, and where they live. And like they live in a super high flow, super cold water environment. And so we have spray bars that really increase the flow of our tanks so that they practice swimming better and grow stronger legs that might prepare them for releasing them. Yeah, we're, like sweatbands the cutest thing ever. So they are, hopefully in recovery. But it's been a tough couple of years. If you guys, if you live in California, you might know we've had some really bad summers, we've had wildfires, we've had droughts, and all of those things impact the ability of these animals to survive, I mean, a tadpole in a little pond that dries up and will make it especially if they're going to take four years. So there's that. And there's also habitat fragmentation. So if you know, waterways dry up, and there's only isolated little ponds, then that can actually create distinctly isolated populations of these animals. And so they're not, they're not having the best time out there. But we're hopeful that with all the work that we're doing, in addition to all the work that our partners are doing, and it's not just you know, us through US Geological Survey, yeah, who is involved San Diego zoos involved, they are doing a lot, actually. And they actually do some research as well to understand better about what's going on with the animals and understand their anatomy and sort of what a mountain yellow legged frog is. We're not doing any research here at the Aquarium. But we are doing quite a bit of head starting, we have a pretty big capacity to receive animals and raise them. And we're really hopeful that this year, we might get to release about 90 to 100 more frogs, which is super exciting. And we have three systems here. One has big frogs in it, they are my favorite one. And he will be memorialized in this podcast is named big chicken, because he looks like a chicken sitting on eggs. And he is like twice the size of the next biggest frog big

check. And we love big chicken. So he's like him the cover photo for the contest.

Seasons cover is just big and yelling into a microphone. And you get a picture of him with his mouth open. But yeah, he's cool. We have just a bunch of animals that are waiting to have a nice home to be released. And then USGS will let us know when it's time. And then they take our frogs and they put them out there.

So that room or that space is technically behind the scenes. And we kind of chatted about that last week with Reed who built the room and plumbed it alongside you and

him and the Life Support team really

did. But well our guests on site ever be able to see him out yelling in front display. Does that ever was that planned?

It's a good question. I think that it's something that we would love to incorporate. Stay tuned, maybe I hope because I don't know. They're cool. I probably I don't think that most people would look at them and be like, Wow. But it's the story right? Like it's absolutely and that's the same with most species is like it's all about what happened to them and sort of like learning more about them as individuals something that is really cool that I've never smelled that sounded weird, is apparently when they're threatened. They released like garlic smell. I haven't threatened them enough I guess because they've never done it to me. But that's cool. You don't like what is yeah probably smells good.

So if you're walking in the San Gabriel Mountains and you smell garlic,

it's probably garlic because there's so because we actually just don't know, but they're, I mean, there's a species that we should save because we did it to them, you know, everything that's happening to them is human caused. And there are animals that evolved to live in this like predator LIS cold waterway. And so they're okay living at 12,000 feet in the air. And so when you think about these creatures that have evolved over so many years to inhabit these extremely niche ecosystems, and then you think about us, you have no one else, disease, and we've just kind of really messed with that cycle. I think that that's a little bit disheartening. So it's been sort of the most inspiring thing to be a part of, and I didn't get to attend the release last year, apparently, it was quite the track into the mountains, and they knew I would slow him down. And let's be honest, I would have because you have to carry a cooler full of frogs up a mountain. Like I can't do that. I could barely walk up a mountain myself, let alone two frogs on my back to dangered frogs. Yeah, I wouldn't, I would tumble down a mountain, then I'd be like, just go. So, but they did send this picture that was like my phone background for months, because it was just one of our frogs on a rock in the wild. And I was like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Because it's so much work that went into just that one frog in order to be reintroduced or make it what what's his name? I didn't name him. Sure. Name him.

Gabriel, San Gabriel. His name is Gabriel, hope you're out there, Gabriel helper out there. It was fun driving for the couple of weeks after we released them, I would think about them. What they're up to, you know, like, I got to know you guys have less. Yeah. I mean, there was so many of them that it was hard to know that he

didn't say I'll jump on you,

Mama. But at the same time, I'm just thinking about them be like, I wonder who's out there. Like who's making it? What bugs are you eating? Yeah. And we're constantly looking for ways to improve our project too, and set them up for better success. So this year, we held on to a couple more of them until they were a little bigger. Maybe they do better when they're released bigger. And they didn't make sense to me because then they're not three grams going out into like, a river. But they do okay.

I mean, it's ticket size.

We need a really big Jason's. I call them budget and like he has some monster size. And when they are first metamorphose, they're three grands gonna make it. I hope so. And he's kind of funny because he'll I call him a dead monster, I'd have a lot of names. But he likes to sit under this rock. And then if a cricket like crawls by, he'll, like, launch out and eat it and then go back into the den. And I was like, if anyone's not gonna get eaten by a bird, it's a big chicken. Nobody knows what's up, get

back in there. What are they eating here at the Aquarium? And what do they typically eat in the wild? Yeah,

it's so I've done a little bit of research on what their natural diet is. And back in the 70s, when there was like a million of them, they used to catch them, and they would open up their stomachs to see what the contents were. And there were beetles. And there were like pond skaters and some like flies, those things are not easy for us to see. Sounds like a live food option. And so I've been doing my darndest to try to get them food that is close. And so they do eat crickets, that is a larger part of their diet, because that is easy to source. And crickets are gut loaded and also dusted with vitamins. And for those of you who might own frogs, vitamins are important for frogs. They get calcium from those vitamins, in addition to UV supplementation helps their bones grow. So supplement your frogs. But they're also eating things like fruit flies. And I've recently introduced Dubia Roaches to some of our bigger frogs that can handle that sort of tough exoskeleton. Yeah, and I wanted it to mimic beetles, you know, like get used to eating stuff that you might see something like it. And I've recently started seeing this really cool behavior from some of our biggest frogs, where they sit at the water surface with just their eyes out and you're their whole body's like, poised to strike. And I'm like, there is nothing that I'm feeding you that would like skate across the surface. But I could so see that being hunting behavior to catch like a spot upon skater, you know, like, you're there it is, there it is and then just launch themselves at it.

So instincts are there. Yeah, the

instincts are there the food is not. So there either. Hopefully will

be is there any threat to their food in the wild right now? Or is it pretty abundant?

Not that I know of I certainly when I was like getting bugs because bear I guess I don't know if it's their favorite bugs, but both be out there. So I definitely got a lot of mosquito bites. It was out there. That's something that I didn't talk about is we There was recently a study that showed amphibians are important because they control mosquito populations. So if you care about amphibians

that you care about getting better with care.

If you hate mosquitoes, yeah, love amphibians. That's,

I think has a role on the ecosystem, right? Except mosquitoes go away. Do they really not have any purpose? It just annoys me Really do but I don't. I am very sorry anti This is an anti mosquito.

We're gonna have on like a mosquito expert next season and be like, what do we anyways? So yeah, that's kind of what we're doing here at the Aquarium. The care is pretty intensive I wish that it was a little bit easier to display and I hope that someday it is

so much work that you're doing just behind the scenes. Yeah, it's been a really fun story to hear about and yeah, and see and you know, getting the access to the room and seeing you know what you're doing back there has been really awesome to

see him BitTitan he's so cute. He's so he's really everyone who has come into the room like to do maintenance or like a couple of people have come in there. I've specifically shown them big check. I was like, this is the biggest mountain yellow like if I will ever see I have ever seen as someone who has seen way more than most people

are more big chickens, but it will be the next game. Bigger chicken

goose, large goose. You Eagle II as they continue to grow, just continue this enormous ostrich. He's a 600 pound mountain yellow 300 or 30 feet long. That's my dream. So it's the dream? No, I really hope that their population start to recover. And we're hoping that sort of as animals adapt to Katrina and that becomes more of a normal part of their life that they also start to find ways to adapt and evolve alongside it. There's some evidence to suggest that maybe frog Sun themselves so heavily because chytrid doesn't do well with heat. And so they're actually just cooking the fungus back to like, Get it off me. And then interestingly, tadpoles are really not impacted by Katrin as much because their skin isn't keratinized there's no keratin in their epidermis. There is keratin in their little raspy mouthparts, though. And so sometimes, if a tadpole has chytrid, you could tell by abnormalities of the oral disc, so their little mouthparts won't be developed properly, or they'll be sort of eaten away by that. So the kitchen is an ever present risk. And so part of the reason why we have such strict biosecurity around our mountain yellow legged frogs, is to prevent introduction, because we've tested them before we release them just to be, you know, doing our due diligence, just on a release would be detrimental. So we have like a footbath, a boot change that goes into it. We have very strict cross contamination protocols that you can't work with mountain frogs if you've worked with the Infibeam gallery. And not to say that anyone in the gallery has catered like that's not the case. But you never know what diseases you might be introducing when you work with similar species in the same day. So we are pretty strict about our mountaineer legged frogs, that's half the reason they're behind the scenes to is to create this little bubble. Also, I will be lying to you if I told you that that wasn't my favorite room, because it's air conditioning. I know it's really nice on a hot day. It's like 93 degrees today. And it is 64 degrees in there. And the water is 50. And so if I'm doing water changes, I'll come out shivering and everyone's like, What is wrong with you? It is 90 degrees.

Just doing I've been through the tundra.

I've been in the alpine mountain lakes. So it's been really great and awesome. Yeah, shout out to Frankie. Wherever you are listening to this very frail, you're listening. Frankie and I both had sort of the experience of like, after that first round was released, it almost felt like our kids went to go so doing so well. Missy that figures

150 more. Yeah.

All your babies. So that was that. I mean, it's a really salient point, right, it's an ever going project because as soon as we release we're trying to take on more and continue to grow more. And we've expanded our capacity recently we have a third system running whereas we had to for the last couple of years. So we're pretty happy with it and if you ever want to be air conditioned to good because I'm the only one you can't know it's it's really nice and I'm very lucky.

Well it's so great hearing you talk about it and I know your dedication to it and I'm lucky to see that up close I actually see frogs at all that's been really cool and I learned so much through this episode in you know being close with you and hearing about them one on one he's been awesome all the time all the time

constantly at every point. Tell you about these frog frogs are doing today. They were being so cute today chicken so many pictures

is one gram bigger. Wow. Hey, awesome. No. Chicken. Oh, I'm so proud. You

can roast the other ones but the chicken is under a symbol. He's our star board roast another chicken roast.

Chicken. That's awesome. Well, are there any conservation efforts that you hope to be a part of coming up? In your career here at the Aquarium of the Pacific?

I think we do a lot and I think with sea otter, surrogacy and mountain yellow legged frogs, I certainly get to be a part of a lot of our front facing conservation work. As I always introduce myself in the beginning of the episode I am my position now is conservation coordinator for mammals and birds. And that in frogs, we just I think our department is called mammals and birds but frogs fall under bands but with my new position And I get to help identify sort of what projects our aquarium can like work towards. And one of the things that I've been working on is having people volunteer for habitat restoration and other conservancies that are local. And also get some hands on experience doing other things, I get to have helped coordinate some of our training for the old wildlife care network. So some of our staff are actually trained to respond to an oil spill and save whatever wildlife might be impacted by that oil spill. And so I get to help coordinate some of those efforts. Now, with Frankie also, it's very fun. And so he's

our invisible guy. We really need to have her on, we will, that would be awesome.

But I do think that it's been cool to see like these other people come through my life and grow up in their careers and move on to other things, but have them still be connections. Frankie is coordinating a lot of the volunteer response for the oil wildlife Care Network. And so I still get to talk to my friend connected. Yeah, and I'm like, Oh, this is what networking means. Being a professional and like knowing people, but also it's just so amazing to see people grow into these roles, and become this like, overarching network of like, we're gonna save the world.

That is, yeah, that's amazing. I think it's great that the aquarium is getting involved into habitats before there's a huge problem. And you there's kind of symptoms of a problem starting but you know, things aren't necessarily going extinct. But we're also hopping on to traumatic.

Yeah, we're not the right word. But one, two, a lot of different, like, disaster, and we had some staff respond to the Huntington Beach oil spill that happened in 2021. To have a network of responders that can respond to anything, you know, at a given moment is really cool. And it's not easy to respond to the wildlife portion of an oil spill, because you're having to pick up an angry wild bird or, you know, some have been handled before. Yeah. And so the oil wildlife care network is this amazing organization that kind of links together, different people at different institutions that and creates this network that like, hey, there's an oil spill in San Diego, we have local San Diego responders who will then go out and do it or if there's one in Huntington Beach, we got mobilized for that. And so we really get to be a part of a lot of different things. And I like having people trained and at the ready to go rather than trying to retro actively train people when something happens. Exactly.

We're ready. Because unfortunately, stuff happens happens.

Yeah, but we're here to to fix it when it happens.

Yeah, and to maybe prevent it from happening in the first place. But that's going to take a little extra work.

Yeah. For now. We will raise the frogs and release them. Well, thank

you so much, Erin, for being my guest today on my podcast. Aquarium of the Podcific It was really great to hear about your passion

for these two little frogs is too much.

And one big frog

I think that I should send you guys a

picture of a chicken I think you should I think you should he should be the cover photo looks like he's

sitting on eggs, like a chicken. He's cute. I hope we get to release them pretty soon. That would be awesome. And I do want to say thank you to all the partners in the mountain Nila good frog program because it's it takes a village to raise really clutch. And I know that sounds really silly, but like, you know, even our life support department built that entire room. They were there today doing maintenance to make sure that the chillers keep the water cold enough. And we have facilities who helps maintain like the way the AC system works in there to keep it cool enough in there. And we have all the husbandry staff were involved with it. And then we have these partner organizations that we have this like overarching management system, and it's just so many people working together to save a species. It's really neat to see

awesome superheroes,

but frogs.

But just make sure little frogs with little capes, super frog put a cape

on big chicken. Oh my god. That's just when he gets bigger. We're just gonna

get there. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Erin. That was awesome. And thank you so much to everybody who listened to our season. We're podcasters we made a whole season.

And thank you to everyone who participated in this season too. I've learned about turtles and sharks and jellies and sea stars and facilities and life support and basically everything that we do here. So I think we're done a podcast.

No, we won't be done. We will. We won't. We are not done. We will be back in a couple of months with Season Two. So let us know what you thought about this season. Let us know what you liked. Yeah, I'm sensitive. So don't tell us anything.

Madeline is the one that receives the comments. She shows me sometimes one of them just said great information, which I really loved seeing that feedback. But also thank you Scott, who's been quietly sitting here all season,

just listening to us. Our number one listener now he's got Shaw he has

listened to every episode. Yeah, it's been great. And thank you guys so much for listening. Please write into any avenue that you can contact a Korean Madeline manages a lot of our social media. And so if you Instagram message Oh or

do anything on social media and Utada said, Hey, I'm gonna see it. So I'd love to hear your feedback what you want to hear on next season, let us know. Cool, thanks, Erin.

Thank you, man.

Thank you pod cific listeners Scott. Thank you, Scott.

Clear Aquarium of the Podcific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific a 501 C three nonprofit organization in 2023. The aquarium celebrates 25 years of connecting millions of people worldwide to the beauty and wonder of our ocean planet. Head to aquarium of pacific.org to learn more about our 25th anniversary celebration. Keep up with the aquarium on social media at aquarium Pacific on tick tock Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This podcast is produced by Erin Lundy, Madeline Walden and Scott Shaw. Our music is by Andrew Wright's MA and our podcast art is by Brandy Kenny. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher and native is and our audio visual and education departments and to all of our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do. Pod cific wouldn't be possible without the support of the aquarium donors, members, guests and supporters. Thanks for listening