Ensuring the survival of a threatened species does not only involve research
in the field and in labs although this is crucial! The long-term survival of a
species, no matter what it is or where it is in the world, needs local people
and communities to have the knowledge, understanding, skills and desire to
conserve it. After all why would someone
act in a different way or give money or time to save something if they knew nothing about it? Therefore
a really important component of any conservation programme involves education,
raising awareness amongst people about the plight of the species or habitat.
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| School children in Montserrat learning about threats to mountain chickens (Photo: S-L Adams) |
These sorts of components have been a key part of our mountain
chicken work from the beginning. They have involved a lot of different activities and covered many different aspects relating to mountain chickens including chytrid and the impact of invasive species. As
well as producing posters, leaflets websites the team has done a lot of work
with local schools and kids like you. This includes going into the classes and talking about
the mountain chicken and taking them into the forest to see what they get up
to.
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| School children learning how to swab a cane toad for chytrid (Photo: S-L Adams) |
In Montserrat the radio is much more popular than television so the project
has done lots of radio interviews to explain to the community what the project is
doing and has achieved.
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| The mountain chicken team speaking on local ZJB radio (Photo: S-L Adams) |
One of the main aims of the awareness programme was to generate pride
in the mountain chicken as the national animal of Montserrat and this has been
seen to be happening in many creative ways. People love to party in the
Caribbean which always usual involve various types of music competitions and
the mountain chicken was the subject of an entry into one of Montserrat’s
Junior Calypso contests written by one of the islands leading musicians! Similar
novel awareness work has been done in Dominica with the most recent Carnival
(the big, big event of the year!) featuring the winner of Miss Dominica in a
full Mountain Chicken costume!
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| "Sugar T" singing about the mountain chicken in the 2012 St. Patrick's Junior Calypso Competition (Photo: S-L Adams) |
Hi Jeff
ReplyDeleteWe were wondering how many tadpoles the mountain chicken may have in one go?
How often do they breed?
Does the male mountain chicken help to raise the young?
Thank you
Class 8.2
Do you know what causes the disease, and you (and when i say you i dont mean you personally, but the royal you- specifically scientists working on a cure) just dont have a cure/treatment yet; or have you no idea what causes chytrid?
ReplyDeleteHi Class 8.2. In captivity between 25 and 100 tadpole are had in a single clutch. We don't know if this is the same in the wild as we have not seen a fertile nest in the wild yet!
ReplyDeleteThey only breed once a year, which on Montserrat seems to be just at the start of the wet season judging by when the males are calling most.
The male does help with raising the young. Nests are made in burrows and the female sits and guards the nest. The male sits outside the entrance to the burrow and guards it against intruders. This level and type of parental care is unique amongst frogs and is much more similar to birds.
The disease is called chytridiomycosis and is caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis - which is commonly referred to as Bd or chytrid. In those species where chytrid causes the disease it is believed to affect the physiological functions of the skin - gas and water exchange and electrolyte balance. When the disease begins to show clinical signs (that is when the animal begins to get sick) depends on the amount of chytrid on the skin. This varies from species to species and also potentially from individual to individual. There are a lot of questions still to be answered about the disease interaction with different species and under different environmental conditions. As for a cure there is not one yet but it finding one is a major area of research around the world.
ReplyDeletehi jeff, I've seen your post about swabbing the frogs to try get rid of the chytrid but if you release them after can't they just catch it again from a from you haven't swabbed yet, isn't it easier to keep all the ones you find then release them? Or do you make it so that the frog can no longer catch chytrid?(I'm not that sure if this question is understandable and if it isn't i am terribly sorry and will try ones hardest to rephrase it in a more understandable question!)
ReplyDelete*just catch it from a FROG you haven't swabbed.
DeleteWhat sort of things have you tried to cure Chytrid? I did some research and you could do a betadine bath for 1 minute (once every 5 days.)- a betadine bath is 1 part "povidone 10% iodine" per 150 parts water in a small bowl; sit the frog in the bath but avoid getting the bath into its nostrils and eyes. Please tell me if you have tried this if not i would do a bit more research on it before considering trying it (we don't want to lose any more!).
ReplyDeleteHi Lilly. We don't swab the frogs to try and get rid of chytrid, so to speak rather it is to see the levels of chytrid both in terms of the proportion of frogs infected and quantities of chytrid on the frogs. When doing the tree-frogs we keep all the tree frogs until we have finished that survey then release them again.
ReplyDeleteGreat research there! We have tried bathing frogs but not in betadine, which is an antiseptic rather in a bath of Itraconazole, which is an anti-fungal agent. Whilst this does not cure chytrid it does appear to have some minor beneficial results which are being written up for a scientific paper at the moment.
COOL! thanks :)
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