As of now I am working full time so the lab work is horribly slow, but with some potential extra hands in the lab things should be up and running soon.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
End of field season
Wood frog sampling for 2012 has come to a close, and thanks to Jim I have a few hundred more samples to process! :)
As of now I am working full time so the lab work is horribly slow, but with some potential extra hands in the lab things should be up and running soon.
As of now I am working full time so the lab work is horribly slow, but with some potential extra hands in the lab things should be up and running soon.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Pond 8 wood frog update
It is with a heavy heart that i report the five wood frog tadpoles from pool 8 have all died over a period of three days. They were all in Gosner stages 42-44. Cause of death yet to be determined...
Monday, May 28, 2012
Way to go!
THANK YOU to everyone who helped fund The Amphibian Ranavirus Project for success in the #SciFund challenge! We are fully funded with three days still left, and can move forward with some pretty awesome research! Thank you to week 3 fuelers Christine Brant, Megan Knight, Jimmy McCarthy, Heather Holmes, Lee Figueroa, Mike Simonovich, Jackie Daemion, Sharon Baisley, Tom Beauvais, and Jacqueline Lu!
Friday, May 18, 2012
Field update
The 2013 field season is underway, with most of this year's wood frog clutches hatched! Congrats to all the little wood frogs that managed to escape last year's green frog tadpoles. For those who don't know, green frog tadpoles overwinter in the ponds that don't dry out during any given year, and by the time next year's wood frog egg masses are deposited, the green frogs have grown into some massively large tadpoles with equally large appetites! Wood frog eggs are a perfectly bite-sized nutritionally rich meal for these predators.
However, last week during a routine water level check, Jim found a bunch of dead, decomposing green frog tadpoles and two adult green frogs in one of the forest pools. This pool was extremely healthy and productive last year, and located far away from any of the ranavirus (RV) infected pools. Furthermore, it is very early in the season to be seeing anything like this yet! The carcasses were too decomposed for RV sampling and testing, so this week I went out and collected 5 live green frog tadpoles to test for RV. If it's there, that means these guys survived the outbreak and could provide evidence for green frogs as vectors.
Here's a video of the pool, Pond 8A. This is one of the isolated pools - the video starts at the trail turnoff, about 100 meters from the service road leading to the forest pools. This is just to illustrate how isolated this pool is, and to give a sense of our day-to-day field treks (this is one of the short ones). I am no videographer and the beginning is very Blair Witch-y, so if you get motion sick I might suggest skipping to 1:15. At about 1:28-1:34 you can get a good sense of the canopy cover for this time of year. This is one of the pools that is in at least partial sun all season. at 1:36 keep an eye out at the bottom of the screen for a darting green frog tadpole. It stops toward the middle of the screen, so you should still be able to see it and get a sense of how big it is. At this stage they are about 6-8 cm (~2.5-3 in) long - WAY bigger than the 1-1.5 cm wood frog tadpoles in this pond.
Speaking of wood frogs, I found some of those alive too! This means if there was a RV outbreak, they either survived with a sub-clinical infection or are still at such an early development stage that they are not yet susceptible due to a changing immune system. I captured five of them via dip-netting, and am raising them in the lab until they are big enough to test for RV. This way I can track their development stages as they grow and answer a couple questions: 1) Are they already infected, but not yet susceptible? If so, then they may die of RV once they reach a certain stage. 2) Did they manage to avoid becoming infected? They are too far along to have still been embryos when the outbreak occurred, so maybe the pool sustained a low enough viral load that they weren't infected. 3) Did they become infected, but for some reason these individuals are more resistant? If so, they may survive until metamorphosis but still test positive for RV. Stay tuned for the start of sampling next week, including a demonstration of the pipe sampling technique.
However, last week during a routine water level check, Jim found a bunch of dead, decomposing green frog tadpoles and two adult green frogs in one of the forest pools. This pool was extremely healthy and productive last year, and located far away from any of the ranavirus (RV) infected pools. Furthermore, it is very early in the season to be seeing anything like this yet! The carcasses were too decomposed for RV sampling and testing, so this week I went out and collected 5 live green frog tadpoles to test for RV. If it's there, that means these guys survived the outbreak and could provide evidence for green frogs as vectors.
Here's a video of the pool, Pond 8A. This is one of the isolated pools - the video starts at the trail turnoff, about 100 meters from the service road leading to the forest pools. This is just to illustrate how isolated this pool is, and to give a sense of our day-to-day field treks (this is one of the short ones). I am no videographer and the beginning is very Blair Witch-y, so if you get motion sick I might suggest skipping to 1:15. At about 1:28-1:34 you can get a good sense of the canopy cover for this time of year. This is one of the pools that is in at least partial sun all season. at 1:36 keep an eye out at the bottom of the screen for a darting green frog tadpole. It stops toward the middle of the screen, so you should still be able to see it and get a sense of how big it is. At this stage they are about 6-8 cm (~2.5-3 in) long - WAY bigger than the 1-1.5 cm wood frog tadpoles in this pond.
Speaking of wood frogs, I found some of those alive too! This means if there was a RV outbreak, they either survived with a sub-clinical infection or are still at such an early development stage that they are not yet susceptible due to a changing immune system. I captured five of them via dip-netting, and am raising them in the lab until they are big enough to test for RV. This way I can track their development stages as they grow and answer a couple questions: 1) Are they already infected, but not yet susceptible? If so, then they may die of RV once they reach a certain stage. 2) Did they manage to avoid becoming infected? They are too far along to have still been embryos when the outbreak occurred, so maybe the pool sustained a low enough viral load that they weren't infected. 3) Did they become infected, but for some reason these individuals are more resistant? If so, they may survive until metamorphosis but still test positive for RV. Stay tuned for the start of sampling next week, including a demonstration of the pipe sampling technique.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
#SciFund
75% funded with 2 weeks to go! The Amphibian Ranavirus Project
Special thanks to week 2 fuelers: Bob & Cathie Maxwell, Rich & Mary Kowalski, Wayne Wilson, Mike & Karen Slaboc, William & Rosemary Reimer, Michelle Bass, Nancy Karraker, Sherry Ashwood, and Jesse Sinclair!
Special thanks to week 2 fuelers: Bob & Cathie Maxwell, Rich & Mary Kowalski, Wayne Wilson, Mike & Karen Slaboc, William & Rosemary Reimer, Michelle Bass, Nancy Karraker, Sherry Ashwood, and Jesse Sinclair!
Friday, May 4, 2012
Comprehensive reading on ranavirus
Here is a nice overview of ranaviral disease, which encompasses all species of Ranavirus and their hosts, from one of the #SciFund project funders and fellow SU alumnus: http://davidstang.com/?p=54
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
On our way!
Day 2 of SciFund crowdfunding, and the project is already 42% funded! Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far: Kathleen Ryan, The Nguyen/Kowalskis, Siouxie Wiles (check out her project HERE), Jim Arrigoni (check out Jim's vernal pool restoration project HERE), David Youker, Tim & Peggy Bergeron, Morgan Gray, and Jean & Charlie Youker!
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Kickoff!
Welcome to The Amphibian Ranavirus Project - an investigation of ranavirus outbreaks in the restored vernal pools of Heiberg Memorial Forest. I am currently an undergrad at SUNY-ESF, soon to begin a MS program in conservation biology/disease ecology. Here is the story of ranavirus at Heiberg:
In 2009, a network of pools were created at Heiberg to monitor the success of vernal pool restoration attempts. This type of wetland is crucial for breeding in many species of frogs, toads and salamanders.
TESTING: I tested the tadpoles using PCR (if you're down with PCR, continue reading! If not, skip to RESULTS or keep reading this section and be really bored). Here's my gel electrophoresis results:
So I tested a total of 15 samples, and 9 came up positive for Ranavirus (there were 2 rows of wells, so there are 5 positive samples in the top row and 4 in the bottom row).
RESULTS: 60% of tadpoles tested from the die-off pools were positive for Ranavirus, which makes me wonder how it weaseled its way into the new wetland. The pools are not connected to any other water sources above ground, so is there a vector or carrier species involved? Do the physical characteristics of the pool make it particularly attractive to vector species? Do pool characteristics make the resident tadpoles more susceptible? Thus begins the journey, to answer life's most existential questions (for a tadpole in a ranavirus-endemic wetland, anyway). Stay tuned...
In 2009, a network of pools were created at Heiberg to monitor the success of vernal pool restoration attempts. This type of wetland is crucial for breeding in many species of frogs, toads and salamanders.
What is a vernal pool? A vernal pool is an ephemeral body of water used by certain amphibian species for breeding. Vernal pools are devoid of fish, so this reduces the predation pressures on eggs and tadpoles. Normally Wikipedia is a pretty sketchy reference, but i think the entry on vernal pools is pretty comprehensive. View it here.Jim Arrigoni, a Ph.D. student at SUNY-ESF, has been monitoring these vernal pools to assess the success of the project. You can read more about the project in Jim's blog. I spent lots of time with him in the field last year, and we discovered die-offs in two of the pools. I tested some of the dead wood frog tadpoles for Ranavirus, since there are not many other explanations in this area for rapid die-offs of this magnitude.
TESTING: I tested the tadpoles using PCR (if you're down with PCR, continue reading! If not, skip to RESULTS or keep reading this section and be really bored). Here's my gel electrophoresis results:
RESULTS: 60% of tadpoles tested from the die-off pools were positive for Ranavirus, which makes me wonder how it weaseled its way into the new wetland. The pools are not connected to any other water sources above ground, so is there a vector or carrier species involved? Do the physical characteristics of the pool make it particularly attractive to vector species? Do pool characteristics make the resident tadpoles more susceptible? Thus begins the journey, to answer life's most existential questions (for a tadpole in a ranavirus-endemic wetland, anyway). Stay tuned...
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