On March 19th, I drove up to Portland, Oregon to attend the spring national steering committee meeting for Partners in Amphibian and Reptiles Conservation (PARC) . Here is how PARC is described on their website:

Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (PARC) is an inclusive partnership dedicated to the conservation of the herpetofauna–reptiles and amphibians–and their habitats. Our membership comes from all walks of life and includes individuals from state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, museums, pet trade industry, nature centers, zoos, energy industry, universities, herpetological organizations, research laboratories, forest industries, and environmental consultants. The diversity of our membership makes PARC the most comprehensive conservation effort ever undertaken for amphibians and reptiles.
Reptiles (alligators, crocodiles, lizards, turtles, the tuatara, and snakes) and amphibians (frogs, toads, salamanders, and caecilians) have suffered from a broad range of human activities, due in part to the perception that these animals are either dangerous or of little environmental or economic value. We know now that they are important parts of our natural and cultural heritage.

I’m planning to collect toe clips from frogs in the Midwest this spring, including from the plains leopard frog, Rana blairi. I’ve been doing preliminary work with two dried up specimens of R. blairi that were shipped to our lab years ago by a commercial frog supplier. I used these specimens to optimize my PCR conditions and conduct some basic genetic analyses, but I need more samples to assess genetic variation within this species. In addition to my planned field season, I have been contacting museums and other herpetologists for previously collected specimens, and I was excited to receive the first of those not long ago.

As I began to study these new specimens, I soon realized that they were genetically quite distinct from the two dried up frogs in our lab. This prompted me to scrutinize our two lab samples a little more closely, and I discovered that they are, in fact, not R. blairi. They appear to be southern leopard frogs, R. sphenocephala, or possibly some sort of weird hybrids. Remember, these frogs were raised by a commercial supplier who keeps several species of frogs, and it appears that these two frogs were incorrectly identified as pure R. blairi. Of course, I can’t rule out that somehow they got mislabeled after they arrived in our lab.

Many biologists depend on specimens collected and identified by someone else, and this involves a great deal of trust. You have to believe that the data someone gives you are valid, or you can’t use them. Too much trust can lead to problems, though, as I just learned the hard way. Whenever possible, scientists should independently verify that their samples are what they think they are.

Fortunately, I shouldn’t have to change my field season itinerary too much. It looks like R. blairi will still be a good species to target for my study, even though everything I thought I knew about R. blairi genes is wrong. But I need to hurry up and study the putatively real R. blairi samples some more before I make my final field work plans.

If it’s still March 20 by the time you read this, happy World Frog Day from us at SC!

I just realized that no one appears to have ever used the phrase “conservation immunogenetics.” I searched Google and the Web of Science for the phrase and found no hits. Time to fix that. I hereby coin the phrase “conservation immunogenetics,” defined as follows: the study of how variation at disease resistance genes affects the long-term survival of a species, and the application of this knowledge to the conservation of biodiversity.

The field of conservation immunogenetics is over 15 years old, even if no one has called it that before. In 1991, Austin Hughes published a paper arguing that vertebrate captive breeding programs should prioritize the maintenance of variation at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). His proposal was too oversimplified to be practical, and was criticized (not all MHC alleles are necessarily important, and certainly other types of genes are just as important as MHC). Nevertheless, it seems clear that species with low variation at immunity genes have a higher risk of extinction, and it is theoretically possible to identify important adaptive genetic variants that ought to be conserved. A sophisticated approach is needed, and the goal of conservation immunogenetics is learn enough to able to locate and save adaptive immunogenetic diversity within species. Conservation immunogenetics is not just restricted to captive breeding programs. For example, wild populations with unique heritable disease resistance capabilities should be special targets of conservation efforts.

Let me know if you have seen a previous example of this phrase. Otherwise, you heard it here first, folks. I’m not founding a new branch of biology, I’m just giving it a name.

Let’s imagine that the sum of what we humans know about the living world is a sphere—like a lustrous, red balloon. The surface area of the sphere is proportional to the amount of knowledge we have. I should point out that I am not the first person to make this analogy (was it Carl Sagan?)—I am just twisting it for my own sinister purposes. Anyways, the sphere started off very small, back in the day when we were chucking rocks at each other and spearing woolly rhinoceroses for supper. Whenever someone figured out some key truth about the biological realm and that truth was disseminated amongst the rest of humanity, the sphere expanded, as though the discoverer had blown a puff of air into the sphere/balloon. Every little discovery puffs up the balloon too, but to a lesser extent.

With the rise of the industrial revolution and communications technology, the balloon expanded hella fast—puff, puff, puff. I would say that after about 1600 C.E., when the Scientific Revolution began, the world’s first real biologists were causing the balloon to expand rapidly. Then along came Darwin. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection damn near caused the balloon to pop. Since every bedbug, wombat, slime mold, marmoset, spirochete, and tunicate—every living organism—is the product of evolution, all of biological knowledge is unified by the theory of evolution. Darwin’s was the single most voluminous lungfull of breath that has expanded the balloon of biological knowledge. That’s what I say, anyway, and this is my imaginary balloon so I can say what I want.

The very word “salamander” is linguistically interesting, and what better forum to discuss that topic than this blog? In both Latin and Greek, “salamandra” initially meant a mythical creature that could live in fire, and it’s not clear whether the word always referred to the actual living animal (although I suspect that frightened salamanders fleeing wood thrown onto medieval hearths originally ignited and helped fuel the myth). “Salamander” used to carry the virtuous meanings of “a woman who lives chastely in the midst of temptations” (sometimes frustratingly true for anyone trying to get salamanders to mate for an experiment) and “a soldier who exposes himself to fire in battle” (their kamikaze nature is obvious to anyone who has seen salamanders try to cross a road or a bike path). Furthermore, to “rub someone a salamander” was a German student drinking toast (source: Online Etymology Dictionary). Thus we have survival, chastity, courage, and beer, all good things, and all befitting those noble amphibians, so full of inner peace and wisdom.

Other cultural baggage doesn’t fit so well. “To gerrymander” is to redraw electoral district boundaries to maximize political gain, named for the oddly shaped district created by 19th century Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, which someone thought looked like a salamander (historical note: it didn’t). In Thomas Wharton’s odd and largely unsatisfying novel, “Salamander,” the word is important in part because it contains the Arabic word “alam,” meaning the whole world. Which is fine, but what does that really have to do with salamanders? On the other hand, what do most of the posts on this blog have to do with salamanders? Maybe we all just like the sound of the word.

Many scholars have noted that language evolves just like species do (Lewis Thomas was the most eloquent author on this point). Evolutionarily, salamanders are noted for morphological stasis but fresh innovations in behavior and biochemistry. Perhaps there are parallels with the word, which has taken on new meanings but still refers to that moist beast that some ancient tribal European might have named when it slipped out of a fallen log set ablaze.

I’m preparing for my first field work in graduate school: I’m going to collect tissue from frogs in the Midwest this spring. Collect tissue. Does that sound suspiciously like a euphemism? To extract DNA from an organism, all you need is a little snip of something: a few hairs, a feather, a scale, a leaf. But amphibians don’t have any of those things growing on them. So I will be collecting frog toe clips.

Ow, you exclaim, not their poor little froggy toes? Yes, it’s true. It’s not a perfect solution, but toe-clipping is the least invasive way to get amphibian DNA. In some cases the toes grow back; salamanders are especially good at digit regeneration, and some frogs are, too, to a lesser extent. And even before the toes grow back, frogs are able to pretty much hop around and practice their normal routine without one of their toes. Some studies have shown that the more toes you clip from a frog, the less likely you will be to re-capture it later, suggesting that toe-clipping is correlated with mortality, but the effect is not great, and herpetologists certainly do re-capture lots of toe-clipped frogs. Pain, of course, is the other big issue. Yes, it probably hurts a bit, but the potential benefits of amphibian research outweigh the suffering of a few individual frogs, in my opinion at least. Still, while I’m out there creating little anuran Cletus Spucklers, Peter Pettigrews, and Mike Grunders, I will be sure to treat them with honor and respect, and thank them for their unwilling sacrifice to science.

Eft Up!

Here is Sarah Harmer singing in French about a Salamander. It’s precious. The lyrics:

Salamander, Salamander
You have to help me understand
All the mysteries of the forest,
The secret map, the golden tree
I’m waiting for you patiently
Salamander

Salamander, Salamander
The two of us together
My solitude and boredom
Disappeared overnight
I’ve led a lonely (slow) life for so long.
Salamander

It’s true, one day I’ll be King
All of France awaits me
Every word I say will be made law
But for now, my only friend
Please come quickly, I beg you.
Salamander

Salamander, Salamander
The night is approaching, I think
The moon will be our candle
Welcome to my new life
Our adventures await us
My Salamander

Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin, the godfather of evolutionary biology. He would have been 198 years old. I wore my “I believe in science” t-shirt as a tribute. A colleague in our department baked an awesome cake in the shape of a leather-bound Origin of Species book! I missed out and didn’t get to eat any of it, but I bet it tasted like sweet, sweet heresy. Oh Charles… Did you ever dream that people would be baking birthday cakes for you 125 years after your death? Darwin is about as immortal as anyone can be.