Citizen scientists needed to survey local amphibians for national database
Chattanooga Zoo offers free training for volunteers
The Chattanooga Zoo is participating in a worldwide amphibian conservation effort and is inviting families, groups and individuals in the greater Chattanooga area to help.
What: FrogWatch USA training sessions
When: Saturday, March 3 and 29, 6-8 p.m.
Where: Chattanooga Zoo
How much: Free
FrogWatch USA is a citizen science program that trains volunteers to listen and report the breeding calls of frogs and toads. The zoo is one of 33 chapters across the country participating in the multiyear effort to track local trends in frog populations.
Zookeeper Rick Jackson said many species of amphibians are in huge decline all around the world. Jackson oversees a unique "assurance population" program at the zoo that cultivates and breeds Kihansi spray toads. The Chattanooga Zoo is one of three institutions in the country helping to save the nearly extinct frogs that used to thrive in Tanzania. The Toledo and Bronx zoos are the other two participating in the initiative.
Keeping track of local, less exotic frogs and toads is just as important, according to Jackson, who said they not only consume literally tons of insects but are also prey for many mammals and reptiles.
"Amphibian populations are in drastic decline right now due to pollution, pesticides and the chytrid fungus, originally introduced to amphibians by humans. In fact, not since the dinosaurs have we faced such a large possible extinction of species," he said.
Jackson hopes to recruit as many local volunteers as possible to participate in free training workshops at the zoo next month that will teach locals how to conduct audible surveys in their own yards.
"We just kind of assume that there are enough people to go out and collect this information so there will be official records, but there really is not. It really takes volunteers and citizen scientists to do these audible surveys of amphibian populations," Jackson said.
During the training, volunteers will learn how to identify a variety of distinct sounds produced by each of the 16 different species of frog and toads that inhabit our area.
"For example, the American toad has a long, held-out, 30-second, high-pitched trill. The upland chorus frog sounds like you are pulling your thumb down the teeth of a comb. The leopard frog sounds like running your thumb around a balloon," he said.
Volunteers will also learn how to record their findings accurately so that the information can be added to a national database.
Interested participants can decide to survey frogs in their own backyards or select another location to survey during the breeding season. Jackson said three minutes a day is all that is needed, and surveys can be done near backyard ponds or drainage ditches.
"This is a fun, wholesome activity for families who can go out [and] be in nature listening to frogs and learning about them. People want to know what they are hearing in their backyards. Meanwhile, they are gathering real data that is honestly used in a centralized database," Jackson said.
According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), frogs and toads have played a key role in research and have become vitally important in the field of human medicine. Compounds from their skin are currently being tested for anti-cancer and anti-HIV properties, according to the website.
"Many previously abundant frog and toad populations have experienced dramatic population declines both in the United States and around the world, and it’s essential that scientists understand the scope, geographic scale and cause of these declines," officials said.
