Background
Discuss about thr Diversity and Distribution of Endangered Frogs on an Isolated Island.
The impact of isolation as a concept in the study of populations had drawn a lot of interest among researchers. Individuals on these habitats vary significantly compared to similar members on the mainland.
Frogs are tailless amphibians of the order Anura. Frogs are smooth-skinned leaping anurans. They have protruding eyes, sturdy webbed hind feet well adapted to swim and leap. Frogs exploit both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Many of the frogs live in water, but some tend to be terrestrial living in burrows or on trees. Frogs have poisonous skin glands which are a defense mechanism against predation by birds, snakes, and mammals. Frogs that fall prey to the snakes and birds tend to take cover by camouflage. Some will conceal with their background while others change color. Most frogs eat worms, small insects, arthropods and a few eating other frogs (Krings et al. 2017.).
Isolated oceanic islands are some of the world’s unique ecosystems. These ecosystems harbor diverse ecosystems due to their indigenous state. They are less disturbed by human influence, therefore, being very stable ecosystems. However, these isolated oceanic islands face a significant challenge when it comes to the population of individuals living on the island. The small populations of frogs living in the island face the constraints of population increase due to inbreeding (Leininger, Kitayama and Kelley 2015). The frog population may increase, but with a small gene pool, this reduces the fitness of the population. This kind of population growth from few individuals accumulates some undesired traits. Due to the founders’ effect, these frog populations may lose an essential trait of resistance. When stochastic events befall the population, a lot of individuals are lost. Extinctions may occur, or the frog species may get extirpated in the isolated oceanic island.
Small populations are vulnerable to events of stochasticity. The endangered frog species on this isolated oceanic island can for instance with the continued global warming; extreme temperatures may kill many frogs through desiccation (Pimm et al. 2014). Frogs aestivate to take cover from the hot sun. When they exhaust the food reserves in their tissues, they could face the danger of starvation to death. Bottleneck effect may happen if many of the frogs die of the heat. If the population is not rescued by frogs from the mainland by migrations especially immigration to increase the genetic diversity of the diminishing frogs, there is a probability of losing the species (Cisneros-Heredia and McDiarmid 2016).
Problem Statement
Frogs breed annually in fresh water. Frogs fertilize their eggs externally whereby the male mounts on the female. The female lays the unfertilized eggs as the male spreads sperms over the laid eggs. Eggs laid vary in numbers from hundreds to thousands (Muñoz-Leal et al. 2017).
New frog species have been isolated on a small oceanic island. This population has high chances of extinction. Stochastic events like the flooding of the island or extreme heat temperatures and drought can easily wipe this frog population out. Global warming is the biggest threat to the survival of these frogs. The frogs have not been identified scientifically but only physically based on their skin color (Pecl et al. 2017). Their behavior and ecological pattern need to be studied for efficient conservation of the isolated and threatened frog species.
General Objective
To assess the diversity and distribution of new threatened frog species in an isolated island
Specific Objectives
- To prepare a checklist of the threatened frog species on the isolated island
- To find out sexual morphology of males and females
- To determine whether their colours are genetically discrete
- To determine whether they are reproductively isolated from one another
- To find out their ecological niches
- To find out the relationship between their skin colour with their behavior and physiology
- To find out the diversity of threatened frog species in the isolad oceanic island
- To determine the distribution of frogs in the isolated island
H? There is no significant difference in the abundance of threatened frog species in the isolated oceanic island
H? There is no significant difference on the distribution of threatened frogs in the isolated oceanic island
H? There is no significant difference on the sexual morphology of male and female threatened frog species in the isolated oceanic island
H? There is no significant difference in the ecological roles played by the different frogs
H? There is no significant difference in the relationship between skin color and frog behavior or physiology
Isolated oceanic islands harbor unique biodiversity of rare species. This specific isolated oceanic island harbors unique frog species whose existence or survival is compromised by global warming. To effective conserve and protect these threatened frogs from extinction there is need to determine their physiological activities, behavior, sexual characteristics, preferred sites, morphological differences and classify them accordingly (Reino et al. 2017).
Data and results from this research will be beneficial in preparing a checklist of the endangered frog Species on the isolated oceanic island. The report of this study will be a tool for decision making as far as conservation of the frog species is concerned. Information from this research will be beneficial as a basis for a future study on the isolated oceanic island and its frogs’ diversity, distribution to enhance their conservation and save them from extinction.
Several frogs are threatened or endangered in their natural range (IUCN Red list of threatened species). Climate change, habitat loss, pollution, global warming, invasive species and pesticides have been affecting the survival of frogs. Some of the endangered frog species are the Panamanian golden frog Atelopus zeteki which is considered a national icon is now extinct in the wild with only a few populations under management in captivity. This species was driven to critical levels by a deadly disease (chytrid fungus) in this case a stochastic event. The disease affects the skin of frogs which is the organ that most frogs use for their gaseous exchange and respiration and drink from. It can kill more than 80% of all the frogs in the habitat (Jessica Aldred, 2008).
Objectives
The Lehmann’s poison frog is a brightly colored frog with a red color yellow or orange stripes. This species is critically endangered. This frog is a specialist species occupying a small part of rainforest in Colombia. They live in small range of less than 10km sq. The species faces the challenge of habitat loss and habitat degradation caused by human influence on the forests as they seek land for agriculture, pollution, human settlement, logging and cultivation of illegal crops (Chan et al. 2017).
The Eleutherodactylus locusts famously known as the interior robber frog is a critically endangered resident of Puerto Rico uplands. Invasive/ introduced/ alien species have been driven their population into a bottleneck. It is debated that the chytrid for amphibians can be contributed by climate change and global warming. The disease exerts stress and pressure on the survival of frogs weakening them then renders them susceptible to the infection of the disease.
The giant ditch frog is a critically endangered species of frog whose numbers have reduced drastically over the past decade. Feral pigs have overexploited their prey which is the frog. Habitat loss in the 1990s was substantially caused by volcanic eruptions. Recently the chicken frog population has been reduced by the chytrid fungus disease.
Mantella cowani is found in the highland plateaus of Madagascar. This small frog has been over-harvested for pet trade internationally. This frog species has a very conspicuous striking appearance making it very attractive. Pet trade has driven the population numbers so low that it is now critically endangered. Demand for land for agriculture, human settlement and deforestation have contributed significantly to habitat loss of the frog. Efforts to conserve the species have been put in place by banning the exportation of the species by the Malagasy government (Scholz et al. 2016).
The oceanic islands are located far from continental shelves. The distance from the mainland to the islands is significant. The ocean acts as a barrier and sieve limiting exploitation of resources in the islands. The ocean reduces chances of population rescue of diminishing island dwellers (Chan et al. 2017).
Oceanic islands could be used for agriculture, human settlement, and logging or livestock keeping. These activities altogether alter the natural setting of the habitat and ecosystem harboring these endangered frogs (Firkowski 2016).
The specimen will be collected along the shores of the oceanic island, at the interior of the island, there shall be piospheres like concentric rings where samples will be collected and recorded.
Hypotheses
Six-pair samples will be taken for morphological assessment. This will be useful I determining the differences between the males and females and among the different species.
Sampled frogs will be measured using a digital caliper to the nearest 0.1mm. The snout-vent length, head width, head length, inter-nostril distance, inter-orbital distance femur length, tarsus length, leg length, eye diameter, eye-nostril distance and foot length. To avoid biasness based on immature specimens, the secondary characteristics will be observed to ensure that only individuals are measured. Some of the features to look at are differentiated rostral skin in males, expanded vocal sacs in males and nuptial pads (Bruschi et al. 2014).
Data will be tested for normality distribution using SPSS software. If the data does not conform to normality, it will be transformed and tested for normality under multivariate analysis and Shapiro-Wilk normality test when the conditions for normality are violated.
PAST software will be used to test the data for the diversity of frogs in the island. Shannon Heiner index will be used in the reporting of the results and discussion.
One way ANOVA will be used to determine the distribution of these endangered frogs in the various piospheres and island sections. Results of abundance will be used to report the distribution of the endangered frogs.
To evaluate the differences in size and morphological differences, a multiple regression analysis will be carried out between the features of the island that influence the ecological niche of the frogs.
All the data analyses will be performed at 95% confidence interval.
Conclusion
Islands harbor unique biodiversity. Small populations in isolated islands are at risk of extinction. To maintain viable populations, there must exist a bridge between the mainland and the islands.
To increase the diversity of these frogs, there is need to bring new individuals into the island to increase the gene pool.
Captive breeding of the frogs can be helpful to increase their numbers within controlled conditions of predation.
References
Bruschi, D.P., Rivera, M., Lima, A.P., Zúñiga, A.B. and Recco-Pimentel, S.M., 2014. Interstitial Telomeric Sequences (ITS) and major rDNA mapping reveal insights into the karyotypical evolution of Neotropical leaf frogs species (Phyllomedusa, Hylidae, Anura). Molecular cytogenetics, 7(1), p.22.
Chan, G.E., Kenyon, M.A., Ngo, S. and Kats, L.B., 2017. The effect of physical stress signals on conspecific interactions in green-and-black poison frogs (Dendrobates auratus).
Cisneros-Heredia, D.F. and McDiarmid, R.W., 2016. The Glass Frogs (Centrolenidae) from the” Río Palenque” Science Center, western Ecuador, with the description of a new species (No. e2159v1). PeerJ Preprints.
Firkowski, C.R., Bornschein, M.R., Ribeiro, L.F. and Pie, M.R., 2016. Species delimitation, phylogeny and evolutionary demography of co-distributed, montane frogs in the southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 100, pp.345-360.
Krings, M., Klein, B., Heneka, M.J. and Rödder, D., 2017. Morphological comparison of five species of poison dart frogs of the genus Ranitomeya (Anura: Dendrobatidae) including the skeleton, the muscle system and inner organs. PloS one, 12(2), p.e0171669.
Leininger, E.C., Kitayama, K. and Kelley, D.B., 2015. Species-specific loss of sexual dimorphism in vocal effectors accompanies vocal simplification in African clawed frogs (Xenopus). Journal of Experimental Biology, 218(6), pp.849-857.
Muñoz-Leal, S., Toledo, L.F., Venzal, J.M., Marcili, A., Martins, T.F., Acosta, I.C., Pinter, A. and Labruna, M.B., 2017. Description of a new soft tick species (Acari: Argasidae: Ornithodoros) associated with stream-breeding frogs (Anura: Cycloramphidae: Cycloramphus) in Brazil. Ticks and tick-borne diseases, 8(5), pp.682-692.
Pecl, G.T., Araújo, M.B., Bell, J.D., Blanchard, J., Bonebrake, T.C., Chen, I.C., Clark, T.D., Colwell, R.K., Danielsen, F., Evengård, B. and Falconi, L., 2017. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science, 355(6332), p.eaai9214.
Pimm, S.L., Jenkins, C.N., Abell, R., Brooks, T.M., Gittleman, J.L., Joppa, L.N., Raven, P.H., Roberts, C.M. and Sexton, J.O., 2014. The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science, 344(6187), p.1246752.
Reino, L., Ferreira, M., Martínez?Solano, Í., Segurado, P., Xu, C. and Márcia Barbosa, A., 2017. Favourable areas for co?occurrence of parapatric species: niche conservatism and niche divergence in Iberian tree frogs and midwife toads. Journal of Biogeography, 44(1), pp.88-98.
Scholz, H.C., Mühldorfer, K., Shilton, C., Benedict, S., Whatmore, A.M., Blom, J. and Eisenberg, T., 2016. The change of a medically important genus: worldwide occurrence of genetically diverse novel Brucella species in exotic frogs. PloS one, 11(12), p.e0168872.
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