Bright orange with a distinctive call the Panamanian poison dart frog Andinobates geminisae lives in only a small area of the Caribbean Coast of Panama. It was discovered and named just a few months ago yet scientists already fear for its future from habitat loss, pet-trade collectors and chytrid fungus—a deadly disease that is decimating frog populations across the globe.

“Andinobates geminisae” (Photo: Brian Gratwicke)

At the Smithsonian’s National Zoo Brian Gratwicke leads the Panamanian Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, a modern-day Noah’s Ark that is attempting to save endangered frog species from chytrid by raising and breeding captive populations. Gratwicke answers a few questions about the Amphibian Rescue Project and if A. geminisae might become its newest member.

Q: How do you decide to add a new species to the Amphibian Ark?

Gratwicke: We have about 12 different species now in the Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project and our goal is to grow that to about 20. To add a new species like A. geminisae we’d need to collect at least 10 males and 10 females to be represented in its first captive generation. For species that are difficult to breed we might need to collect more animals than that to ensure that we can maintain a genetically healthy captive population.

So that’s one big unknown; A. geminisae is a fairly rare frog and we don’t know if we will be able to find more. Maybe they have already declined from chytrid, which can happen rapidly. We’ve run into a situation before where we found three frogs of a species that is highly sensitive to chytridiomycosis on our first trip, and after going back numerous times, never saw any ever again.

Limosa harlequin frogs are among the 12 frog species currently in the Amphibian Rescue Project. (Photo by Brian Gratwicke)

But before we add a species to the Amphibian Rescue Project and devote the resources and staff necessary to care for it, we also need to be in a position to make a really informed decision about adding it. So, we first try to make as many natural history observations about a potential candidate as we can. With A. geminisae we are not sure what its susceptibility is to chytrid. It seems to be a fairly terrestrial frog [chytrid is a water-borne fungus] and we are not even sure if chytrid will kill them.

We also need to figure out what environmental cues a frog needs to reproduce, where it reproduces and what habitat might be limiting for reproduction. For some species we may also turn to people who keep similar species as pets to learn about successful husbandry practices and what they have done to rear them successfully. There are a fair number of Andinobates in the pet trade because they are really attractive little frogs.

So, right now our real priority is to learn a little more about this species and whether we can breed it in captivity.

Q. Are pet-trade collectors a problem for frogs?

Gratwicke: Because of its color A. geminisae might be attractive animal to collectors. Once people know where it is some will certainly go looking for it. Panama has few collectors but they could have an impact when they harvest frogs from a very small population. For example, Panamanian golden frogs were once found in Cerro Campana National Park in Panama, but they were totally collected out of that locality, even before chytrid became an issue.

Brian Gratwicke swabs a frog in the field to test it for the deadly chytrid fungus. (Photo courtesy Brian Gratwicke)

Q. If chytrid is here to stay, what is the ultimate plan for the frogs in the ark?

Gratwicke: The ultimate plan for our existing collection is to develop some tools that we might use to help these frogs resist chytrid infection, and then reintroduce frogs that are less susceptible to the disease back into the wild. We’ve been actively researching the frog’s skin microbiome, with the hope that we could treat susceptible frogs with beneficial skin bacteria that might protect them from fungal infections, but it has proven much more difficult to manipulate the frog skin microbiome than we anticipated.

We also have been looking at the immune response of frogs to chytrid fungus and we’ve found that some frogs have very strong immune response as measured through their transcriptomes. Basically each cell has a nucleus full of DNA that is converted to RNA before making the proteins that govern cell function. So when we do a transcriptome analysis we are reading the RNA that is actually giving orders to all of the organelles to make various different kinds of proteins and ultimately get a glimpse of the genes being expressed at a single moment in time in any particular tissue.

So let’s say we actually find a frog that manages to resist a chytrid infection. We’d look to see if this group has a different genetic signature than the non-chytrid resistant group. Our ultimate aim would be to understand the frog’s immune response to chytrid infection so that we could help give them a leg up in the battle against chytrid.

“Atelopus certus,” lives Cerro Sapo (or Toad Mountain) in the Darien Region of eastern Panama, and is one of the most strikingly colored or all harlequin frogs. This species is in the Amphibian Rescue Project. (Photo by Brian Gratwicke)

Q. How long do these frogs live and are they breeding well?

Gratwicke: A frog’s lifespan depends on the species. Some species like the La Loma tree frog seems to be really short lived. The oldest frog of this species we’ve had in captivity has lived about 5 years, but on the other hand Panamanian golden frogs can live for more than 15 years!

All the frogs in our Amphibian Rescue Project pods are wild-collected founding members or their first generation offspring. Our goal is to breed all of the founders as quickly as possible. We don’t want to begin breeding a second generation until we have as many of the founders bred as we can. This way we capture as much of the genetic diversity of our founders before those animals die. If they die without being bred, they’re gone forever, so we are really racing against the clock.

Q: Are there things you can do to get captive frogs in the mood to mate?

Gratwicke: Yes, there are a lot of different potential cues to get a frog, male and female, into breeding condition. For certain species we’ve tried making it rain, we tried a simulating misting system, we tried making waterfalls, we played calls back to them at night, we tried giving them a little bit of light, we tried giving them no light, we tried giving them all different kinds of food.

Nutrition is important; you’ve got to have an animal in a really positive nutritional space before they can expend energy on reproduction. For our harlequin frogs, we breed them a special kind of moth larva that has a high fat content and we give them to the females to get them to start producing eggs.

Q: What other measures are being taken to save these frogs?

Gratwicke: We’re also doing some research to see if we can freeze frog sperm and we have pretty good results coming out of that program right now. So hopefully we could actually freeze frog sperm of all of our male founders that are not yet represented in captivity, so that if they do die before they are actually breed we can still have a plan B. Frozen sperm is kind of an insurance policy. Researchers have been trying to do this for many years and have largely failed, because frog sperm is activated in a frog’s urine and once activated it is really hard to cryopreserve, and then thaw.

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Yellowstone National Park is one of the world’s most protected ecosystems. But that’s still not enough to keep its grizzly bears completely safe. Click here for show times of Smithsonian Channel’s “Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink.”

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Bleached coral off the coast of Panama.

A new study by Florida State University and Smithsonian Institution biologists shows that bleaching events brought on by rising sea temperatures are having a detrimental long-term impact on coral.

Bleaching—a process where high water temperatures or UV light stresses the coral to the point where it loses its symbiotic algal partners that provides the coral with color—is also affecting the long-term fertility of the coral the scientists reveal in the latest issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series.

Don Levitan and William Boudreau of Florida State University; Javier Jara from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and Nancy Knowlton from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are co-authors of the study.

Most corals reproduce by releasing sperm and eggs into the ocean during brief annual spawning events. The chance of sperm finding and fertilizing an egg depends on corals spawning in close proximity and in synchrony with each other.

In a study of the corals that build the major framework of Caribbean coral reefs, the team found that the species living in shallower water experienced near total reproductive failure, while the species living in deeper water were about half as likely to spawn.

“The remarkable finding from this study was that the reduction in spawning persisted for three additional years, long after the corals had regained their symbiotic partners and regained their normal appearance,” says Levitan, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida State. “Even corals that didn’t bleach aren’t reproducing at the levels they should.”

The worldwide decrease in coral abundance in combination with long-term reductions in spawning and reproduction following bleaching events put reef- building corals in a difficult situation. Eggs might be released, but never fertilized. And that could have a major impact on the ecosystem at large.

Levitan and other researchers been studying coral just off the coast of Panama since 1996. Since then, those corals have been exposed to two bleaching events. On average, it takes coral three to four years to recover from bleaching.

“Even if we can fix what’s killing these corals, it’s going to be hard for coral populations to recover, because the surviving corals might not successfully produce enough offspring to repopulate reefs,” Levitan said.

Coral reefs provide protection and shelter for many different species of fish. Without the reefs, certain fish are left homeless and without an area to reproduce. They also protect coastlines from large waves and flooding, a major issue in areas that are prone to tropical storms or hurricanes.

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Map of known dead zones (white dots) and predicted changes in annual air temperature for 2080-2099 versus 1980-1999. The air temperature predictions are based on a “middle-of-the-road” scenario of fossil fuel use. (Credit: Keryn Gedan and Andrew Altieri)

A full 94 percent of the dead zones in the world’s oceans lie in regions expected to warm at least 2 degrees Celsius by the century’s end according to a new report from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center published Nov. 10 in Global Change Biology. The paper states that warmer waters—mixed with other climate change factors—make for a dangerous cocktail that can expand dead zones.

Dead zones form in waters where oxygen plummets to levels too low for fish, crabs or other animals to survive. In deeper waters, dead zones may last for months, as with the annual summer dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay. Temporary dead zones may occur in shallow waters at night. The largest dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Baltic Sea can cover more than 20,000 square miles of the sea floor. The number of dead zones across the world is growing exponentially, doubling each decade since the 1960s.

“They’re having a big impact on life in the coastal zone worldwide,” said Keryn Gedan, a co-author and marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the University of Maryland. “A lot of people live on the coast, and they’re experiencing more fish kills and more harmful algal blooms. These are effects of dead zones that have an impact on our lives.”

Dead juvenile menhaden fish (Brevoortia tyrannus) float to the surface during a dead zone event in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. (Credit: Andrew Altieri/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)

The main culprit is massive algal blooms, which pull oxygen from the water when they respire or decompose. Algal blooms form from excess runoff of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. But climate change could exacerbate the problem.

Warmer waters hold less oxygen, the authors explain in the paper, enabling dead zones to form more easily. When temperatures rise, animals like crabs, fish and oysters need even more oxygen, which the ocean is less able to provide.

“Our study is the first to consider more than a dozen direct and indirect effects of climate change on dead zones, and suggests that we’ve underestimated its contribution to the growing dead zone problem and impacts on marine life,” said Andrew Altieri, the study’s lead author and ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Altieri and Gedan looked at a database of more than 400 dead zones around the world and then overlaid them on a map of the annual temperature anomalies expected to occur in each region. Under a middle-of-the-road scenario, 94 percent of dead zones are in areas expected to warm by 2 degrees C or more by 2099. Then they did a thorough literature review, synthesizing information from many fields to predict how the various effects of climate change could work together to impact dead zones.

Piles of mussels (“Mytilus edulis”) washed onto a beach after a dead zone event in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Besides providing food and habitat for other creatures, mussels can also filter water. When mussels die, the bay loses its ability to clear water of phytoplankton, increasing the risk of future dead zones. (Credit: Andrew Altieri/Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)

Besides making it harder for water to hold oxygen, rising temperatures stifle ocean mixing that can keep dead zones in check. Dead zones near the bottom can dissipate if waters from the surface sink, injecting them with fresh oxygen from above. But since warmer waters float, this life-giving conveyor belt grinds to a halt.

Other factors besides temperature come into play. Sea-level rise leads to the expansion of bays and estuaries, raising the overall volume of water susceptible to low oxygen. The same rising waters also can destroy wetlands. Wetlands are one of the best defenses against dead zones because they filter out excess nutrient pollution that feeds massive algal blooms.

Shifting ocean currents could further expand dead zones by flooding them with more oxygen-starved waters. This is already happening in the St. Lawrence Estuary where cold, oxygen-rich waters from northern Canada have declined and are being replaced by warmer, oxygen-poor waters from the central North Atlantic.

Altieri and Gedan uncovered just one possible positive impact of rising temperatures: Since animal metabolism spikes under higher temperatures, tiny crustaceans, like copepods, and other zooplankton could eat up the algal blooms that create dead zones in the first place. “We do see some cases where algal blooms are smaller in warmer years, because the grazers are able to control algae better,” Gedan said. But, she added, it is unclear how that will interact with the other climate change impacts they have witnessed.

Altieri suggests there is an important lesson to learn from their study: “There is a lot of inertia when it comes to global climate change, but we can counteract climate effects on dead zones through local control of nutrient pollution.”

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Swainson’s warbler (Gary Graves photo)

When Gary Graves cranks up his boom box and drives remote back roads through pine plantations in Texas, Louisiana and other southern states, a few locals often emerge just looking for a fight. “If they are in there, they’ll come out,” Graves observes. “When I turn it off they calm down a little bit. Then they start singing.”

Graves, an ornithologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is referring to one of North America’s rarest songbirds, the Swainson’s warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii). Highly territorial, male warblers come out to defend their turf when they hear the song of another male on Graves’ boom box. This method of drawing them out is nearly the only way Graves, or anyone else, would ever see and hear these small, secretive, olive-colored migratory birds that live and breed in dense underbrush.

The global population of Swainson’s warblers is estimated at about 90,000, a low number attributed to the loss of breeding habitat in the U.S. and wintering habitat in Mexico, Cuba and Jamaica. After studying and surveying Swainson’s warblers across the South for more than two decades, Graves reports something remarkable today in the journal Bird Conservation International. Since the 1990s Swainson’s warblers have been establishing dozens of new breeding populations in industrial pine plantations across 10 different Southern states from Texas to Virginia.

Gary Graves examining the type specimen of the Swainson’s warbler in the collections of the Division of Birds in the  Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Donald Hurlbert)

Unlike natural forests with many different tree species of many different ages, pine plantations are monocultures of one species, all the same age and size and planted in evenly spaced rows. They were once described as biological deserts.

“Pine plantation forests are a new ecosystem that didn’t really exist before the 1920s in the southeastern United States,” Graves explains. “They represent a fundamentally new wildlife habitat.”

Millions of acres of these industrial pine forests stretch from Texas to Virginia and are on a harvesting cycle of 25 to 35 years before they are cut. “They are the backbone of a $210 billion forest industry in the United States that keeps us in lumber for our houses, products from toilet paper to notebook paper and even woodchips to mulch your lawn,” Graves explains.

A surprising plasticity

Once thought to nest only in lowland canebrakes in North America, Swainson’s warblers are now known to also nest in a variety of broadleaf forest environments. The fact that this species is now establishing breeding populations in plantation pine forests reveals a surprising plasticity in its ability to select new habitats, Graves says. This behavioral trait is one not shared by the endangered Kirtland’s warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii) of Michigan’s jack pine forests which has rigid nesting requirements of small trees and open areas; or the Bachman’s warbler (Vermivora bachmanii), thought to be extinct, which was restricted to the swamps and lowland forests of the southeast United States.

A singing male Swainson’s warbler (Photo by Gary Graves)

“Behavioral plasticity in habitat selection may explain why Swainson’s warbler has survived two centuries of intense forest clearing and habitat alteration, while Bachman’s warbler has become extinct,” Graves says.

Swainson’s warblers find pine plantations attractive for nesting only during a specific stage in the forest’s development, when the pines mimic the early successional broadleaf habit these birds have traditionally used for breeding. Once the plantation pines reach about 20 feet high, the understory achieves a high-stem density and screening at about desk height that the Swainson’s warblers prefer. This condition persists for about 7 to 8 years, until the trees reach about 40 feet high and 15 years old. After that, the understory density thins out and the warblers disappear.

Learning to like a new place

There may be some type of behavioral learning, in the warblers’ transition to the pine plantations, Graves observes. “But its only been happening for the last 25 years and it appears to be accelerating. Sometimes we see these behavioral shifts in animals but we don’t know the mechanisms of why. These birds are just learning to like a new place. Sometimes these changes can evolve quite rapidly within a dozen generations, and the generation time of these birds is just one year.”

Most plantations occupied by Swainson’s warblers have a certain weediness, namely broadleaf saplings, vines and shrubs growing along the edges of roads and streams crossing the forests. (Photo by Gary Graves)

Swainson’s warbler breeding pairs require large territories of between 10 to 20 acres, which the pine plantations provide. Most warbler territories observed by Graves occurred in plantations planted on sandy loam soil, with normally low water tables, he says. “These pine forests may be creating a microhabitat at ground level where the birds feed on insects in the leaf litter, maintaining humidity and allowing them to live on dryer soils then they have traditionally.” Also, Graves observed, most plantations occupied by Swainson’s warblers had a certain “weediness,” associated with them: namely broadleaf saplings, vines and shrubs growing along the edges of roads and streams crossing the forests.

Covering some 40 million acres in the U.S. today, southern pine plantations are projected to increase to 66 million acres by 2060, Graves points out in his paper. “Given the 25 to 35 year rotation cycles commonly prescribed for private and commercial plantations, and a 7 to 8 year window of habitat suitability for Swainson’s warblers in a typical stand,” roughly one quarter of these pine plantations will be suitable habitat for these birds at any given time, provided that other requirements such as deciduous weediness and soil moisture are met, Graves concludes. “If current distributional trends continue, forestry lands managed for short rotation pine plantations will soon support a majority of the global Swainson’s warbler breeding population.”

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Mammal survey field assistant Megan Banner holds a dusky rice rat, “Melanomys caliginosus,” that was caught in a live trap in Costa Rica. It was later released. (Photo by Christopher Russell)

Scientists have long known that in the tropics shade-grown coffee plantations provide critical habitat for migratory and resident birds. Now a new survey conducted in Costa Rica reveals that shade coffee farms also harbor small mammals in greater species diversity and in greater numbers.

During a seven month study researchers used live traps and camera traps to survey a variety of small mammals living in three different habitats in the mountains of Costa Rica: forests, shade coffee plantations and sun coffee plantations.

A coffee farm in the mountains of Costa Rica where the survey was conducted. (Photo by S. Amanda Caudill)

“We found that both forests and shade coffee plantations had significantly more species of small mammals and in a higher abundance than sun coffee plantations,” says S. Amanda Caudill, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who led the study. One of the reasons is that shade trees may provide more food—fruit and seeds—for small mammals, Caudill explains.

“Prior diversity research on coffee plantations has been dominated by bird and insect studies,” Caudill adds. “This is one of the few studies to focus on small- to medium-sized mammals in coffee plantations.”

The study was published in a recent edition of the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment.

This photograph snapped by an infrared camera trap shows a northern raccoon, “Procyon lotor.” (Photo by S. Amanda Caudill)

The dusky rice rat, Alfaro’s rice rat, northern raccoon, nine-banded armadillo, Mexican deer mouse, rabbits, mouse opossums, grey 4-eyed opossum and the northern tamandua were all among the 17 different species of small mammals recorded by the researchers during the survey.

Mammals clearly benefit from the increased canopy cover and vegetation complexity that shade coffee provides, Caudill says. In fact, some of the study sites showed no significant difference between forest and shade coffee for small mammals diversity.

A Robinson’s mouse opossum, “Marmosa robinsoni,” leaps from one coffee branch to the next in a plantation in Costa Rica. (Photo by S. Amanda Caudill)

On shade coffee plantations coffee shrubs are grown and nurtured beneath a canopy of tree cover. These farms are basically artificial forests devoted to coffee production and require less maintenance, pesticides and fertilizer. On sun coffee plantations the coffee shrubs are planted in the direct sun.

“Coffee is grown in what is called the ‘bean belt’ and it overlaps areas of high biodiversity which makes it a very interesting system to study, especially for biodiversity conservation,” Caudill says.

A group of field assistants gather to talk after an outing checking live traps for mammals during the rainy season in Costa Rica. (Photo by S. Amanda Caudill)

“The way coffee is managed and the way that it is grown can significantly influence the biodiversity that a farm and its surrounding landscape can support.

“On a broad scale, landscape perspective, when there was a lot of sun coffee in the landscape we saw a decrease in small mammal abundance and richness in the entire landscape.”

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Left-handed snails, giant wombats, spiny trilobites, zombie ants, glyptodonts…these are a few of the fascinating animals and plants whose fossils spring to life across the pages of A History of Life in 100 Fossils, a new offering from Smithsonian Books.

Selected from the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the Natural History Museum in London, each fossil is beautifully photographed and explored in-depth with a captivating description of its importance to the story of evolution and life on Earth. Organized chronologically from the Precambrian through the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, the book reveals the remarkable and persistent unfolding of fantastic life forms across the Earth as revealed in the fossil record.

Co-authors Aaron O’Dea of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Paul Taylor of the Natural History Museum in London carefully compiled the images in this book from hundreds of possibilities.

One of the first and oldest entries, a 3.5 billion-year-old rusty red stromatolite fossil, is arguably the most important. Dominating the world’s oceans for a staggering 3 billion years, stromatolites eventually filled the atmosphere with enough oxygen to enable the rise of complex oxygen-breathing organisms.

Aaron O’Dea

The oddest entry is a spiral bezoar (fossilized feces) recovered from ancient sea sediments and which once was imbedded in the intestine of a prehistoric shark.

Most touching: The Laetoli footprints from Tanzania, left in a matter of seconds some 3.5 million years ago, appear to show the path of a small family of early hominins, Australopithecus afarensis, wandering through a volcano’s devastation.

Steller’s sea cow wins as the saddest entry, “a sad tale of a once magnificent beast driven to extinction by hunting,” O’Dea, a paleobiologist, says. “Without its fossil record we would have had no idea that the animal was naturally widely abundant until a few thousand years of hunting whittled them away to almost nothing.”

“Onychonycteris finneyi,” a remarkably complete bat fossil found in 52-million-year-old lake sediments in Wyoming.

Other fossils examined include Cambrian worms from China that provide a window on early animal life in the sea, ancient insects encapsulated in amber, the first fossil bird Archaeopteryx and the last ancestor of humankind.

Writing A History of Life in 100 Fossils with Taylor “was a fantastic experience,” O’Dea observes in his blog. “Researching in detail about fossil groups I had previously paid little attention to, spinning evolutionary tales with a single slab of rock and crafting them in a way that could be accessible to all. As I wrote I tried to weave all the big biological themes into the book; natural selection, convergent evolution, sexual selection, extinction, the origin of life and even parasitism.”

A History of Life in 100 Fossils is brimming with epic tales of survival and migration, evolution and destruction once concealed in the buried remains of animals and plants that lived long ago.

Available from Smithsonian Books October 14.

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(Photo: Patrick Kelley/U.S. Coast Guard)

Archived feed of this symposium »

The world is changing at a rapid pace. Scientists have documented significant changes during the past century in climate, land-use and biodiversity that are unprecedented over the past thousand years. To examine this phenomenon through the lenses of science, society and culture, the Smithsonian is hosting a symposium “The Anthropocene: Planet Earth in the Age of Humans,” was held Thursday, Oct. 11, from 9:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

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Learning from the forest. Setting up a long-term forest research plot in a tropical dry forest in the heart of Panama City.

Click here for a Methodology Guide for the establishment of a forest research plot.

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The poison dart frog “Andinobates geminisae”

A bright orange poison dart frog with a unique call was discovered in Donoso, Panama, and described by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Instituteand the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí, both in Panama, and the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. In the species description published this week in Zootaxa, it was named Andinobates geminisae for Geminis Vargas, “the beloved wife of [coauthor] Marcos Ponce, for her unconditional support of his studies of Panamanian herpetology.”

Every new species name is based on a representative specimen. The specimen for this species was collected Feb. 21, 2011, in the headwaters of the Rio Caño, in the district of Donoso, Colón Province, Panama, by Samuel Valdés, who was then the MWH Global Inc.environment office director, and his field assistant, Carlos de la Cruz. Additional specimens were collected between the Rio Coclé del Norte and the Rio Belen by biologists Marcos Ponce and Abel Batista, then a student at the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí. The specimens were deposited in the Museo de Vertebrados at the University of Panama, the Museo Herpetólogico de Chiriquí at the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí and in the Círculo Herpetólogico de Panamá.

“Abel Batista and Marcos Ponce were the first to note the presence of this species,” said Cesar Jaramillo, Smithsonian herpetologist. “They’ve known it was there for several years. However, they were not sure if it was only a variety of another poison dart frog species, Oophaga pumilio, which exhibits tremendous color variation. Based on morphological characteristics of the adult and the tadpole, I thought it might be a new species of Andinobates.”

Andrew Crawford, professor at Universidad de Los Andes and former STRI postdoctoral fellow, sequenced the DNA, confirming that this was a new species of Andinobates. Genetic information about this species is available in the Barcode of Life Data System and in GenBank. A recording of the call is available at AmphibiaWeb.org.

Because this new frog species appears to be found in only a very small area, habitat loss and collecting for the pet trade are major threats to its existence. The authors recommend the formulation of special conservation plans to guarantee its survival. A. geminisae is included in the captive breeding program of the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, a consortium of six zoos and research institutions dedicated to saving amphibians from the chytrid fungal disease, which is decimating amphibians worldwide, and habitat loss.

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A predator crown-of-thorns sea star eats an undefended coral, leaving visible white scars of exposed coral skeleton where the tissue has been removed. (Photo by Jenna Moore)

Imagine sitting down at your favorite restaurant when something under the table begins painfully pinching and snipping at your toes. This is basically how T. flavopunctata crabs in French Polynesia defend their coral hosts from the large and lethal Crown-of-Thorns sea star (Acanthaster planci).

Long before a sea star can begin eating a coral, T. flavopunctata living inside the coral emerge and begin pinching the sea star’s tube-like feet, shaking them and nipping them off. “Basically, they annoy the sea star until it goes away,” says Jenna Moore from the Florida Museum of Natural History, who is also a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of Natural History.

When scientists removed the largest species of the guard-crabs, “Trapezia flavopunctata” (shown here), from the path of an army of predator sea stars, the effects were dramatic; corals without guard-crabs, or with other species of guard-crab, were eaten—usually overnight. (Photo courtesy Seabird McKeon)

The crabs are not only defending their home, the coral is also their restaurant. Coral keep T. flavopunctata crabs and other crab species happy with fatty deposits they produce in the tips of their tentacles that the crabs snip off and eat.

In a recent study in French Polynesia, Moore and Seabird McKeon, a scientist at the Smithsonian’s Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Florida, learned that to stay safe and sound, a coral needs a variety of crabs of various species and sizes to defend it against predators both large and small. Details from this study are published in the Sept. 30 issue of the open-access journal, PeerJ.

“We found that diversity in both species and size of coral guard-crabs is needed to adequately fend off coral predators,” McKeon says. “It is an example of how biodiversity is crucial to conserving reef environments and the essential resources they provide for thousands of species, including humans.”

A crab inside its coral home. Coral guard-crabs across the Indo-Pacific live in and fiercely defend coral reefs against predators in exchange for shelter and nutrition that the corals secrete. (Image copyright David Liittschwager)

For example, while crabs of the species T. flavopunctata were staunch defenders against Crown of Thorns sea stars, they ignore a much smaller threat, the sea snail Drupella. Enter the smaller guard crab species T. serenei, which takes up the fight against encroaching snails. McKeon and Moore studied three species of crabs known to protect coral in a series of experiments to examine the effectiveness of different species and various sizes of crabs at repelling multiple coral predators.

In one trial, the research team removed T. flavopunctata from corals in the path of the sea stars. The results were dramatic; corals without T. flavopunctata crabs were eaten—usually overnight.  (To eat, a sea star must invert its stomach and drape it over a coral head. It then secretes digestive enzymes that dissolve the coral tissue and allow its stomach to absorb them.)

Small and large crabs belonging to “Trapezia serenei”(above) proved to be effective coral defenders against a range of predators; the smaller crabs protected the coral from Drupella snails while the larger crabs honed in on mid-sized sea stars. (Photo copyright David Liittschwager)

“Seemingly small differences among crabs guarding their coral homes can have big effects on coral survival,” Moore says. “Not only does the level of protection provided vary by species, but the smallest crabs were defending the coral from coral-eating snails, a threat that larger crabs ignored.”

Multiple species of crabs live inside a coral in monogamous male-female pairs. Only one pair of the same species resides in each coral and they will fight off others of their same species that intrude on their territory. “They don’t like to live in the same coral host with the same species unless they are a mated pair,” Moore says.

Moore and McKeon concluded that multiple lines of defense are a direct result of guard-crab diversity and are necessary to keep coral reefs safe long-term.

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One hundred years after the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the nation’s top bird science and conservation groups have come together to publish The State of the Birds 2014—the most comprehensive review of long-term trend data for U.S. birds ever conducted. The authors call the results unsettling. The report finds bird populations declining across several key habitats, and it includes a “watch list” of bird species in need of immediate conservation help. The report also reveals, however, that in areas where a strong conservation investment has been made, bird populations are recovering. The full report can be found at stateofthebirds.org.

The State of the Birds 2014 is authored by the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative—a 23-member partnership of government agencies and organizations dedicated to advancing bird conservation. The report is based on extensive reviews of population data from long-term monitoring. It looks to birds as indicators of ecosystem health by examining population trends of species dependent on one of seven habitats: grasslands, forests, wetlands, ocean, aridlands, islands and coasts. This year’s report is also a five-year check-in on the indicators presented in the inaugural 2009 The State of the Birds report.

Bobolink, Chester County, Pa. (Photo by Kelly Colgan Azar)

After examining the population trends of birds in desert, sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West, the report’s authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss of these birds since 1968 in states such as Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Habitat loss and fragmentation due to development are the largest threats. These are also significant threats in the nation’s grasslands, where the report notes a decline in breeding birds, like the eastern meadowlark and the bobolink, of nearly 40 percent since 1968. That decline, however, has leveled off since 1990—a result of the significant investments in grassland bird conservation.

“This report highlights the threats that birds face, but it also offers hope for their future if we act together,” said Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. “I am gratified that the Smithsonian contributed to this important effort, which shows that collaboration among agencies and organizations can yield valuable insights into difficult challenges.”

Feral mongoose on the island of O’ahu, Hawaii. (Photo by J.N. Stuart)

While habitat loss and fragmentation are the most consistent and widespread threats across habitats, they are closely followed on the list by invasive species. Introduced species have a particularly strong impact on islands where native birds have a greater restriction in where they can live. In Hawaii, introduced animals such as mongoose, rats and domestic cats serve as unnatural predators and take a huge toll on native species, while grazing livestock degrade habitat. One-third of all U.S. federally endangered birds are Hawaiian species.

However, as with many grassland birds, species in several other key habitats have benefited from targeted conservation. In general, shorebirds along the coasts are squeezed into shrinking strips of habitat due to development. But among the 49 coastal species examined, there has been a steady rise in population of 28 percent since 1968—a direct result of the establishment of 160 national coastal wildlife refuges and nearly 600,000 acres of national seashore in 10 states.

Female oak titmouse (Photo by David A. Hofman)

The creation and preservation of large swaths of forests through public-private partnerships in the Appalachian Mountains and the Northwest has helped declining forest-dependent species such as the golden-winged warbler and the oak titmouse. Efforts like this are essential, as forest-dependent birds have declined nearly 20 percent in the western U.S. since 1968 and 32 percent in the east.

Wetlands are one of the habitats to benefit most from conservation. The North American Wetlands Conservation Act has enabled strategic conservation projects covering a collective area larger than Tennessee. While wetland loss continues in some regions, the Act has helped protect and restore wetlands through public-private partnerships across the United States, thereby reversing declines in waterfowl populations such as the mallard and blue-winged teal.

Blue-winged teals (Photo by Dan Mullen)

In addition to assessing population trends in the seven key habitats, the North American Bird Conservation Initiative members created a The State of the Birds Watch List. The 230 species on the list are currently endangered or at risk of becoming endangered without significant conservation. Forty-two of them are pelagic (open ocean) species. Birds like the Laysan’s albatross and black-footed albatross are facing increasing levels of oil contamination, plastic pollution and greatly reduced amounts of prey fish due to commercial fishing operations. Rising sea levels due to climate change also put their low-elevation breeding habitats in the Hawaiian and Marshall islands at risk of flooding.

More than half of all U.S. shorebird species are on the Watch List, including the piping plover, long-billed curlew and red knot. Loss of habitat and uncontrolled harvesting in the South America and Caribbean are some of their biggest threats.

A red knot brooding freshly hatched chicks on her nest in Chukotka, Russia. (Photo by Gerrit Vyn)

One of the more dire groups on the Watch List is made up of the 33 Hawaiian forest species, 23 of which are listed as federally endangered. The report’s authors have deemed Hawaii the “bird extinction capital of the world”—no place has had more extinctions since human settlement. They point to proactive, partner-driven conservation as the best way to recover endangered birds and keep other species off the Endangered Species List, not only in Hawaii but in all key habitats.

Another group on the Watch List will require international cooperation: neotropical migrants. These species that breed in North America but migrate south of the U.S. border in winter hold 30 spots on the Watch List. Species like the Bicknell’s thrush, a bird that breeds in the mountains in the Northeast, faces rapid deforestation of its already limited wintering grounds on the island of Hispaniola. A positive precedent, however, lies with the cerulean warbler, a species that breeds in forests of the eastern U.S. and winters in the tropics. While its numbers are still declining, it has benefited by international collaborations to not only create healthy breeding habitat in the U.S., but good wintering habitat in Colombian coffee-growing landscapes.

Grasshopper sparrow (Photo by Dave Govoni)

The passenger pigeon, once numbering in the billions, is a strong reminder that even species considered common can become extinct without careful attention, as it did Sept. 1, 1914. Another focus for The State of the Birds 2014 is the importance of keeping common birds common. The report identifies 33 species, like the northern bobwhite quail, grasshopper sparrow and bank swallow, that do not meet the Watch List criteria but are declining rapidly in many areas. These birds have lost more than half their global population, and the 33 species combined have lost hundreds of millions of breeding individuals in just the past 40 years.

The report points, once again, to conservation as the most valuable solution to stopping these species from joining the Watch List. Addressing the conservation needs of these birds will result in healthier, more productive land and water for other wildlife, as well as for people.

The strongest finding in The State of the Birds 2014 is simple: conservation works. Ducks fly once again in great numbers up the Mississippi River and across the Chesapeake Bay. California condors are rebounding from just 22 birds to more than 200 today. Bald eagles, brown pelicans, peregrine falcons—all species once headed the way of the passenger pigeon—are now abundant. To prevent future extinctions like the passenger pigeon, the report’s authors point to science, technology and knowledge as the foundation of proactive partner-driven conservation.

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Wetlands

Wetlands are one of the habitats to benefit most from conservation. The North American Wetlands Conservation Act has enabled strategic conservation projects covering a collective area larger than Tennessee. While wetland loss continues in some regions, the Act has helped protect and restore wetlands through public-private partnerships across the United States, thereby reversing declines in waterfowl populations such as the mallard and blue-winged teal.

Arid and Grasslands

After examining the population trends of birds in desert, sagebrush and chaparral habitats of the West, the report’s authors identify aridlands as the habitat with the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss of these birds since 1968 in states such as Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Habitat loss and fragmentation due to development are the largest threats. These are also significant threats in the nation’s grasslands, where the report notes a decline in breeding birds, like the eastern meadowlark and the bobolink, of nearly 40 percent since 1968. That decline, however, has leveled off since 1990—a result of the significant investments in grassland bird conservation.

Forests

The creation and preservation of large swaths of forests through public-private partnerships in the Appalachian Mountains and the Northwest has helped declining forest-dependent species such as the golden-winged warbler and the oak titmouse. Efforts like this are essential, as forest-dependent birds have declined nearly 20 percent in the western U.S. since 1968 and 32 percent in the east.

Coasts

More than half of all U.S. shorebird species are on the Watch List, including the piping plover, long-billed curlew and red knot. Loss of habitat and uncontrolled harvesting in the South America and Caribbean are some of their biggest threats. In general, shorebirds along the coasts are squeezed into shrinking strips of habitat due to development. But among the 49 coastal species examined, there has been a steady rise in population of 28 percent since 1968—a direct result of the establishment of 160 national coastal wildlife refuges and nearly 600,000 acres of national seashore in 10 states.

The post The State of the Birds: Four critical habitats (videos) appeared first on Smithsonian Science.

The nation’s top bird science and conservation groups have come together to publish The State of the Birds 2014—the most comprehensive review of long-term trend data for U.S. birds ever conducted.

The report finds bird populations declining across several key habitats, and it includes a “watch list” of bird species in need of immediate conservation help.

The report also reveals, however, that in areas where a strong conservation investment has been made, bird populations are recovering. The full report can be found at stateofthebirds.org.

#STOB14

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Q: Are things getting better or worse for birds in the United States?

The 2014 The State of the Birds report provides both encouraging and discouraging findings. The report finds bird populations declining across several key habitats and includes a “watch list” of bird species in need of immediate conservation help. The report also reveals, however, that in areas where a strong conservation investment has been made—wetland birds, for example—bird populations are recovering and growing.

Q: What birds are worse off, better off?

Birds in aridland habitat show the steepest population declines in the nation. There has been a 46 percent loss in the population of these birds since 1968. Habitat loss, hydrological alteration, overgrazing and conversion to agriculture are the largest threats. These are also significant threats in the nation’s grasslands, where the report notes a decline in breeding birds, like the eastern meadowlark and the bobolink, of nearly 40 percent since 1968. That decline, however, appears to have leveled off since 1990—a result, the authors say, of the significant investments made in grassland bird conservation

Lesser prarie chicken, a threatened bird of the arid grasslands. (Photo by J.N. Stuart)

In addition, introduced species have had a particularly strong impact on native island birds. In Hawaii, introduced animals such as mongoose, rats, domestic cats, pigs and goats have taken a huge toll on native species. One third of all of America’s federally endangered birds are Hawaiian species.

There are some encouraging signs for many species in grasslands, wetlands and several other key habitats that have benefited from targeted conservation efforts. In general, development is squeezing shorebirds and their habitat along the coasts. However, among the 49 coastal species examined, there has been a steady rise in populations of 28 percent since 1968. This may be a reflection of the establishment of 160 national coastal wildlife refuges and nearly 600,000 acres of national seashore in ten states.

The creation and preservation of large swaths of forests through public-private partnerships in the Appalachian Mountains and the Northwest is believed to have helped declining forest-dependent species such as the golden-winged warbler and the oak titmouse. Efforts like this are essential, as forest-dependent birds have declined nearly 20 percent in the western U.S. and 32 percent in the east since 1968.

Q: What are some bird species that warrant conservation attention given the findings of the 2014 report?

Declining species include:

Palila—one of many unique Hawaiian forest birds that continue to decline and are perilously close to extinction. These birds require immediate strong conservation actions to protect and restore native forest habitats by fencing and eradicating non-native ungulates such as non-native mouflon sheep and controlling introduced predators such as feral cats and mongoose.

Bendire’s thrasher—declining at 4.6 percent each year over 45 years; threatened by loss of desert scrub habitat due to urban expansion and conversion to agriculture, exacerbated by prolonged drought and increased temperatures related to climate change.

Hudsonian godwit (Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Hudsonian godwit—among the steepest declining (-6.2 percent per year since 1974) of a large suite of declining, long-distance migrant shorebirds; threatened primarily by disturbance and loss of highly localized wintering sites along the South American coasts, due to aquaculture (e.g. shrimp farming) and coastal development, as well as disturbance and loss of spring stopover habitat in the Gulf-coastal and mid-western prairies.

Chestnut-collared longspur—declining by more than 4 percent per year over 45 years; threatened by continued loss of native prairie grassland due to conversion to agriculture (crops), and especially in recent years by rapid loss of native grassland in the Chihuahuan Desert grassland region of northern Mexico due to unchecked and often illegal conversion to pivot-irrigation agriculture.

Cerulean warbler in Carrol County, Md. (Photo by Frode Jacobsen)

Cerulean warbler—declining by 3 percent each year over 45 years; threatened by unsuitable structure and composition of mature deciduous forest, especially in the Appalachians; improper forest management; urban expansion; and loss of montane forests in the Andes due to rapid clearing for pasture and agriculture.

Q: What are some of the notable success stories?

American Oystercatcher—U.S. coastal populations have increased 6 percent per year since 1974. Recent population increases and range expansion can be attributed to targeted conservation actions to protect breeding and roosting sites along the Atlantic Coast, supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and other partners.

American oystercatcher (Photo by Kelly Colgan Azar)

Wood ducks, gadwall, and ring-necked ducks are among the harvested waterfowl that have increased 2-3 percent per year over the past 45 years, as a direct result of wetland habitat management and restoration under the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.

Kirtland’s warbler—an endangered species that has responded positively to targeted conservation efforts under the Endangered Species Act; its population rebounded from a low of 167 males counted in 1974 to more than 2,000 in 2012, and the range is slowly expanding from its tiny core in Michigan to adjacent areas in Wisconsin and Ontario.

Bald eagle—recovering at a remarkable rate of 5.5 percent each year since the banning of pesticides such as DDT and the enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972; they were removed from the U.S. Endangered Species List in 2007. Other fish-eating birds such as osprey, brown pelican, double-crested cormorant, and northern gannet have enjoyed large population increases as well.

Florida wild turkey (Photo by Heather Paul)

Wild turkey—increasing at one of the fastest rates of any North American bird (8 percent per year since 1966), in direct response to habitat management and reintroduction programs by state wildlife agencies and private hunting groups. The comeback of the wild turkey is considered one of the greatest conservation success stories in U.S. history.

Q: Are there any new or emerging threats to birds?

Climate change is becoming increasingly important as a looming threat to birds. Sea-level rise affects breeding habitat for coastal birds, island birds, and colonial seabirds. Warming temperatures in Hawaiian forests are allowing mosquitoes to move up into higher elevations, reducing the amount of habitat free of avian malaria. Warming ocean temperatures are also disrupting stocks of prey fish that seabirds rely on. An immediate threat is the drought in the West. This puts additional pressure on aridland birds that are already being affected by hydrological alteration, overgrazing, and conversion to agriculture. More is being learned about anthropogenic mortality thanks to recent studies which identify cats and collisions with buildings and automobiles as the leading human-caused sources of bird mortality.

This albatross died filled with plastic items it had swallowed. (Photo by Chris Jordan)

Q: How can federal and state governments better protect birds?

There are more than a dozen key governmental programs that deliver bird conservation results and some of their successes are reflected in this year’s The State of the Birds report. Those programs require continued local and federal government support and funding and include: the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act, Migratory Bird Joint Ventures, the Farm Bill (which contains several key conservation features), and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

Q: Why should people be concerned with the overall state of birds?

Birds are vitally important indicators of ecosystem health. By examining population trends of species dependent on the seven habitats—grasslands, forests, wetlands, ocean, arid lands, islands and coasts—it can be better assessed how well or poorly those systems are operating and possible sources of problems and corrective actions can be better identified.

Q: What is the State of the Birds Report and who creates it?

The State of the Birds Report provides an extensive review of population data from long-term monitoring. This year’s report is also a 5-year check-in on population indicators presented in the inaugural 2009 State of the Birds report. The State of the Birds 2014 report is authored by the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, a 23-member partnership of government agencies and organizations dedicated to advancing bird conservation.

Q: How can individual citizens help protect birds?

There are many actions that individuals can take to help birds in their area. For example: buy Duck Stamps which help fund conservation work; buy Smithsonian Certified Organic Bird Friendly coffee; drink organic half and half in your coffee, as some data are showing very encouraging bird conservation findings associated with organic dairy farms; use fewer pesticides; create more natural habitat in yards; keep cats indoors and don’t let dogs run free; and keep feeders and water sources fresh.

For more tips, check out these links:
abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/140624.html
abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/140320.html

Those interested in more in-depth bird conservation activities might want to consider a host of citizen science opportunities, including:

• The North American Breeding Bird Survey
• The Christmas Bird Count – longest-running citizen science survey in the world
• Project Puffin partnership
• The citizen science program at Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• USA-National Phenology Network: Nature’s Notebook

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