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.

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:

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...