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Amphibians-- the frogs, toads, and this little lesser known group called the Caecilians.
It’s part of-– they are in a lot of trouble right now. It’s been called an extinction
crisis right now on the scale of the loss of the dinosaurs. And it’s happening really
fast. For a lot of these species, one of their last hopes may actually be to bring them very
quickly into captivity and establish populations, survival insurance populations we call them,
in a zoo setting or in centers that are actually based closer to where those frogs live. Just
because declines are happening so fast it’s happening much faster than science can keep
up with what’s the solution to keep this disease from wiping out these populations
of frogs. For us it was how do we control these diseases in the captive populations
and how can we give guidance to zoos on how to better control those things. For our genetics
division that’s worked on this, what they’ve been able to do is develop methods to grow
skin cell cultures of frogs, which is actually really difficult. The frog amphibian cells
haven’t cooperated in the past. So they’ve worked on scientific methods to try to get
those so that it can be permanently archived in our frozen zoo.
Our national leadership grant is very complementary to what San Diego zoo is doing. So, what they
are working on is developing tests to be able to identify disease in amphibians but also
to cryopreserve, and biobank cells from amphibians. Part of our project and why it complements
it, is we are actually cryobanking reproductive cells; so ***, eggs, embryos and these kinds
of things. And why that’s really important is while you can bank down cells, and contribute
to studies looking at a whole host of factors, if we reap-– if we bank down reproductive
cells with we can actually use those to generate offspring. So they are directly
applicable to saving species. So not only are we developing these reproductive technologies
that are having immediate effects to restoring populations, but we are also saving down genetics
for the future that can be reintroduced even after the death of an animal. The work from
IMLS here on this project is now supported. We reintroduced more than 10,000 tadpoles
back into the wild for restoring these populations. Any time we lose a part of our biological
system or ecological system, what happens is it has unforeseen consequences and often
those consequences are terrible for us, both to our environment as well as to sometimes
our own economy. And so, for example, amphibians which we are working with have a tremendous
impact on our own economy for example. There are hundreds of chemicals that pharmaceutical
companies make from products that amphibians secrete like biochemicals from their skin
and so forth. And they also eat a tremendous number of insects that we oftentimes view
as pests. And these pests are one of the main things on their menu. So it protects us from
having to spend more on insecticides and chemicals that we pour into our environment. And also
what happens when you remove an animal like a flea like you mentioned, or if you remove
a frog or toad from the environment, it has a cascading effect that goes completely through
the ecosystem. They contribute to millions and millions of dollars to the pharmaceutical
company every day and the next cure for cancer might be out there associated with an amphibian
that’s about to go extinct. So not only are they important part of the ecology, but
really they can have a tremendous impact on our own economy and our health.
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