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Stories/News
Lawsuit to Save Jollyville Plateau Salamander
Just 10 years after its official discovery, one of Texas' rarest amphibians is in immediate danger of extinction. That's why last week the Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance filed a notice of intent to sue for emergency protections. The two-inch-long Jollyville Plateau salamander spends its entire life underwater and has experienced serious decline, as well as deformities, from urban development polluting its spring and wet-cave habitats. Now it's in more danger than ever from the city of Austin's planned construction of a water-treatment plant in the heart of its habitat. In fact, one population has already been lost to the mere drilling of a test well.
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A New Tiny Frog
From the AWeb site:
"A tiny new frog (the Old World's smallest) has been discovered living and breeding inside pitcher plants on Borneo. Das and Haas (2010) describe the new species, Microhyla nepenthicola, in the journal Zootaxa. Adult male frogs measure between 10.6 and 12.8 mm in snout-vent length (SVL); new metamorphs measure just 3.5 mm on average (one-third the diameter of a pea). Although pitcher plants are carnivorous and consume insects that fall in, Microhyla nepenthicola tadpoles suffer no ill effects from developing inside the pitcher's digestive liquid.
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A Cure for Chytridiomycosis?
from the AmphibiaWeb site:
Can amphibians in the wild be saved from the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis, using bioaugmentation of naturally occurring amphibian anti-fungal skin bacteria? This summer will be the first test, in California.
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Invasive Amphibian Species
From AmphibiaWeb News:
What distinguishes invasive amphibian species at the earliest stage of becoming invasive?
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Curing chytrid
From AmphibiaWeb News:
Can chytridiomycosis be treated in the wild?
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Tadpoles Making Noise--Under Water
From the AWeb Site:
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A new paper from Acta Zoologica (Natale et al. 2010) reports that the tadpole of Ceratophrys ornata makes distress calls underwater, the first example of any larva communicating by sound underwater, and the first known of any vertebrate larva to make sounds.
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The Atlas of Global Conservation: Amphibians
In association with the Nature Conservancy and University of California Press, The Washington Post has published distribution maps of the numbers of species, for the major vertebrate groups.
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Lorestan Newt Is Listed by CITES
From the AWeb site:
Neurergus kaiseri, the Lorestan newt, has just been granted protection from international trade under CITES Appendix I, as of March 21, 2010.
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