Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Joe McCormick, my.
Speaker 3: Name is Robert Lamb, and today.
Speaker 2: We're bringing you a new interview with Mark Mendica, executive
Speaker 2: director of the Amphibian Foundation, based in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Mark has been on the show a couple of times before,
Speaker 3: highlighting the work that the Amphibian Foundation does to help
Speaker 3: critically endangered amphibian species and to educate the public about herpetology.
Speaker 3: But it's been several years and the Amphibian Foundation recently
Speaker 3: celebrated its tenth year, so we figured it was high
Speaker 3: time to check back in with Mark.
Speaker 2: We'll start with a bit of biographical information. Mark Mandica
Speaker 2: is the co founder and executive director of the Amphibian Foundation,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of amphibians.
Speaker 2: His work puts him on the front line in efforts
Speaker 2: to conserve declining native and tropical amphibians. He received his
Speaker 2: bs from UMass where his thesis focused on the ephemeral
Speaker 2: wetland ecology of amphibians. He then went on to the
Speaker 2: American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he
Speaker 2: worked as a curatorial assistant before moving to South Florida
Speaker 2: for graduate school at U Miami. Mark's masters explored the
Speaker 2: amphibian community ecology in the Everglades, photoreception related activity patterns
Speaker 2: in South Florida buffinids, as well as the prey detection
Speaker 2: and feeding mechanics of aquatic pipid frogs. Mark is also
Speaker 2: a professional scientific illustrator and is published in textbooks as
Speaker 2: well as the Journal Science, Nature, Journal of Experimental Biology, Zoology,
Speaker 2: American Zoologist, and many others. Originally, Mark's academic interests were
Speaker 2: broadly based on the form, function, and evolution of amphibians,
Speaker 2: with particular interest in the biomechanics of feeding, prey detection, capture,
Speaker 2: and transporting. The course of his studies, however, it became
Speaker 2: increasingly difficult to simply find amphibians at study sites, and
Speaker 2: as a result, he has joined fellow scientists and naturalists
Speaker 2: to address the global amphibian decline crisis. Before founding the
Speaker 2: Amphibian Foundation in twenty sixteen, he managed the amphibian conservation
Speaker 2: program at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Marquez now dedicated the
Speaker 2: majority of his time towards conservation efforts aimed at reversing
Speaker 2: amphibian declines in the Southeast US and abroad, and teaching
Speaker 2: amphibian biology, ecology, and conservation at the Amphibian Foundation and
Speaker 2: Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia.
Speaker 3: Now, before we jump into the interview, proper, I do
Speaker 3: want to encourage you to visit their website. It is
Speaker 3: Amphibianfoundation dot org. There's tons of information there about all
Speaker 3: the various programs they are involved in, and you can
Speaker 3: follow them on multiple social media platforms as well. For instance,
Speaker 3: they are Amphibian Foundation on Instagram. All right, without further Ado,
Speaker 3: let's jump right into the conversation. Hi, Mark, welcome back
Speaker 3: to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 3: So longtime listeners will remember you and the work you
Speaker 3: do with the Amphibian Foundation from the past couple of
Speaker 3: times you've been on the show. But for those who
Speaker 3: weren't along for the ride back, then can you give
Speaker 3: us a refresher on what the Amphibian Foundation is, what
Speaker 3: its mission is, and how it came into being.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you know, I can't even believe it. Next year
Speaker 5: it'll be ten years since we started the Amphibian Foundation
Speaker 5: here in Atlanta, primarily to address the imminent extinction of
Speaker 5: a particular species of salamander, the frosted flatwood salamander. But
Speaker 5: since then the program has grown quite a bit and
Speaker 5: we've added additional species. We fund these conservation actions through
Speaker 5: our own educational programs, and so we've really built quite
Speaker 5: a community. It's really blown my mind. We have thirty
Speaker 5: staff members now about sixty volunteers. It's just really mind
Speaker 5: blowing and just providing a place for people to come
Speaker 5: and contribute to this wonderful group of animals that we're losing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back in twenty eighteen, I believe we chatted a
Speaker 3: bit about the plight of the frosted flatwood salamander. Can
Speaker 3: you remind us a little bit about what the frosties
Speaker 3: are all about? And more importantly, how are they doing?
Speaker 3: How is the conservation effort going? Six years later?
Speaker 5: Thank you for that, because I usually describe it as
Speaker 5: this species is quietly going extinct. Most people have never
Speaker 5: even heard of this species, a frosted flatwood salamander, but
Speaker 5: it really was once quite a common species throughout the
Speaker 5: entire southeast, and now it's gone from South Carolina and
Speaker 5: it's almost gone in Georgia. There's one wetland left, and
Speaker 5: then in Florida there are a couple of clusters of
Speaker 5: puddles and then that's it. I mean, this is species
Speaker 5: that we're considering at imminent risk of extinction. And it's
Speaker 5: very mysterious as well. Because it's underground for fifty weeks
Speaker 5: of the year. It's very challenging to find and study.
Speaker 5: And so we were in twenty sixteen given permission from
Speaker 5: the government to build a captive survival assurance colony. That's
Speaker 5: when you know it's getting really bleak. When you feel
Speaker 5: like the best chance of thwarting extinction is to actually
Speaker 5: remove animals from the wild and protect them a very
Speaker 5: bad sign. And that's where we were at with the frosties.
Speaker 5: You know, there's been little glimmers of hope. We were
Speaker 5: successfully able to breed that species for the first time
Speaker 5: and so we have actual baby labord frosted flatwood salamanders
Speaker 5: and once we did that, we were able to transfer
Speaker 5: baby salamanders to four other institutions, so we have partners
Speaker 5: now all working with this species. That's all very positive.
Speaker 5: We have yet to be able to breed them again
Speaker 5: at any facility, so we're still working on that and
Speaker 5: in the wild the species continues to crash. And that's
Speaker 5: the part that's really scary because it might be that
Speaker 5: this captive program is what saves the species, and that's
Speaker 5: really intense.
Speaker 2: Do we know if the main drivers of the collapse
Speaker 2: in the wild populations are due to habitat loss or
Speaker 2: to other factors or what we do?
Speaker 5: I think they are a long leaf pine endemic species,
Speaker 5: and so that ecosystem was more or less removed, you know.
Speaker 5: I think there's like between three and seven percent left
Speaker 5: of that habitat. So really any species that is endemic
Speaker 5: to that type of habitat is in trouble right now.
Speaker 5: And that includes like gopher tortoises and indigo snakes, you know.
Speaker 5: And there are a lot of the red cockaded woodpecker
Speaker 5: gets a lot of attention, you know, and and so
Speaker 5: the frosties are abummed because of that. But there are
Speaker 5: more nuanced things that are directly impacting the species. Because
Speaker 5: it's a salamander that is completely dependent on fire, which
Speaker 5: is really interesting to think about a salamander that can't
Speaker 5: live without fire and fire suppression and in other ways
Speaker 5: that humans have altered fire regimes are still impacting the
Speaker 5: frosties even on the lands where they're theoretically protected. They've
Speaker 5: they've evolved over millions of years to co occur with fire,
Speaker 5: so they know when to be out of the fire's way.
Speaker 5: And so when humans either suppress the fire so the
Speaker 5: habitat changes, or burn when it's more convenient for humans
Speaker 5: to burn, that's not when the frosties are below ground
Speaker 5: and out of harm's way. That's when they're up above
Speaker 5: ground and they literally get burned. And so that's a
Speaker 5: big problem. And then you add in the fact that
Speaker 5: this is a species that breeds in ephemeral wetlands, wetlands
Speaker 5: that hold water for a short periods of time, but
Speaker 5: only when the ponds are dry. They won't breed in
Speaker 5: a pond if it's full. They need to lay their
Speaker 5: eggs in a dry pond and then the eggs wait
Speaker 5: for rains to come and fill the pond and hatch
Speaker 5: the eggs. That's worked for them for millions of years,
Speaker 5: but it's not working for them in recent years because
Speaker 5: of shifting climates and drought, and the eggs are often
Speaker 5: just drying out and dying in the field. And so
Speaker 5: that's most of our program is from collecting these eggs
Speaker 5: from the field that are going to dry out and
Speaker 5: they get brought back to the lab. And the people
Speaker 5: that were collecting these eggs for us are our federal
Speaker 5: partners that many of which are losing their jobs right now,
Speaker 5: are waiting to find out if they'll have a job.
Speaker 5: And it's added this layer of chaos because it's we're
Speaker 5: right in the middle of the breeding season, like right now,
Speaker 5: you know, this is what we should be doing right now,
Speaker 5: and so it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: Well, Mark, we may have covered this one of the
Speaker 2: previous times you were on the show, but it might
Speaker 2: be worth getting into it again. It's fascinating. You mentioned
Speaker 2: how the salamanders rely on fire for their life cycle.
Speaker 2: Could you give a little more detail on that. In
Speaker 2: what way do they rely on fire? How does that
Speaker 2: fit into what they do?
Speaker 5: Sure, the long leaf pine ecosystem is historically maintained by fire,
Speaker 5: and the animals that live in that environment have adapted
Speaker 5: to it, you know, And so we're talking about burn
Speaker 5: cycles of every one to three years. That's how frequently
Speaker 5: their area would burn, usually during the spring and summer.
Speaker 5: Usually fires caused by lightning strike would ignite and Only
Speaker 5: the plants that can survive that much of a pummeling persist,
Speaker 5: and that keeps them the habitat wide open. These are
Speaker 5: you know, there are long leaf pine savannas. They're called
Speaker 5: the flat woods in some areas.
Speaker 4: Because the.
Speaker 5: Ponds are very shallow, you might not even notice them.
Speaker 5: If you know, especially because the flat woods breed in
Speaker 5: dry ponds, you might not even recognize that a few
Speaker 5: inches of a depression somewhere are actually a really important
Speaker 5: wetland and it needs to burn. The bottoms of the
Speaker 5: ponds need to burn out, otherwise the habitat changes. If
Speaker 5: you suppress the fire, the long leaf pine will get
Speaker 5: outgrown by other trees, and other types of vegetation will
Speaker 5: eventually come in and replace it, and then it's no
Speaker 5: longer suitable for the salamanders. And so that's the main
Speaker 5: struggle with them.
Speaker 3: And then in captivity is the sort of the main
Speaker 3: challenges to getting them to breed? Do they seem to do?
Speaker 3: These challenges seem to relate to just making sure that
Speaker 3: the environmental conditions are just right that they'll want to
Speaker 3: breed with each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is a mystery. First, we were just trying
Speaker 5: to figure out how to keep these things alive, because
Speaker 5: that had never been done before, and they didn't come
Speaker 5: with an instruction manual of any kind. And so we
Speaker 5: started to notice things that we were interpreting as interest
Speaker 5: in breeding behavior, and so we tried putting them together
Speaker 5: in different assortments and different arrangements and tried to queue
Speaker 5: in on what we thought was you know, giving them
Speaker 5: the signals, and so we got it right a couple
Speaker 5: of years ago, but we haven't been able to recreate
Speaker 5: that magic this year. Because we had groups set up
Speaker 5: in multiple institutions with cameras, we were able to observe
Speaker 5: some of the breeding behaviors and they were clearly communicated.
Speaker 5: You know, it really is surprising that they didn't breathe
Speaker 5: this year. But I think basically that we are having
Speaker 5: a lot of There are a lot of young animals,
Speaker 5: and probably next year will be even more likely to
Speaker 5: have success. But we were learning very quickly having so
Speaker 5: many amazing partners working on this same problem together. When
Speaker 5: we were first looking to set up these redundancies, you know,
Speaker 5: we reached out to, you know, anyone we thought might
Speaker 5: be interested in some of these amazing world class zoos
Speaker 5: got involved. So we actually shifted animals out to Omaha.
Speaker 5: So Omaha's Henry Dorley Zoo have some frosted flatwood salamanders
Speaker 5: in North Carolina Zoo as well, and then the Brevard
Speaker 5: Zoo in Florida, and then an actual federal fish archery,
Speaker 5: the Warm Springs National Fish Archery has some frosted flat
Speaker 5: with salamanders as well, And so we're still looking to
Speaker 5: expand into other institututions as well. So if there are
Speaker 5: institutions out there that might have the capacity to help
Speaker 5: set up a colony of these guys, please reach out.
Speaker 3: To me, because again, right now, captive rereading seems to
Speaker 3: be like the main hope for these for the species
Speaker 3: moving forward.
Speaker 4: Right it's really hard to predict.
Speaker 5: You know, if you would have asked me that question
Speaker 5: a month ago or two months ago, I would have
Speaker 5: given you a different answer than right now. But when
Speaker 5: I'm talking to our partners, the ones that I can
Speaker 5: still get on the phone, you know, they're saying, we
Speaker 5: know the gun is to our head, we're waiting for
Speaker 5: someone to pull the trigger, and they don't really know
Speaker 5: if they're going to have a job, and they're not
Speaker 5: optimistic that the Endangered Species Act is going to remain
Speaker 5: intact either, and so there's a lot that it's changing
Speaker 5: very fundamentally right now in ways that are scaring me.
Speaker 2: Well, Mark, to stick with the scary stuff for the moment.
Speaker 2: We have been talking specifically about the frosted flatwood salamander,
Speaker 2: but I was all also looking at some research published
Speaker 2: just the past couple of years in Nature before we
Speaker 2: came in to talk today. It was based on assessments
Speaker 2: from a number of conservation groups saying that currently amphibians
Speaker 2: are the most threatened class of all the world's vertebrates.
Speaker 2: Do we know what are the main causes for this
Speaker 2: or what do we think are the most likely causes?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Absolutely, thank you for that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there are more amphibians than mammals and birds combined
Speaker 5: that are threatened right now.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just and.
Speaker 5: It's the same things that are impacting other types of wildlife.
Speaker 5: It's just that with amphibians it's times a thousand, you know,
Speaker 5: because it's really comes down to their skin. And for example,
Speaker 5: you'll never see a frog drink, you won't. They just
Speaker 5: absorb everything right through their skin, and that includes anything
Speaker 5: that we have put into the environment as well. That
Speaker 5: also gets absorbed into the frog's skin, you know. So
Speaker 5: like when I was an undergrad, we were seeing frogs
Speaker 5: with birth defects, being born with extra limbs or not
Speaker 5: enough limbs, you know, in areas where you would normally
Speaker 5: expect the amphibians to be okay. That was in the
Speaker 5: nineties and it's really only gotten worse since then. I mean,
Speaker 5: you'll hear you'll hear that amphibians sometimes described as the canary.
Speaker 4: In the coal mine, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And so if that's true, then amphibians are some type
Speaker 5: of warning for humans.
Speaker 4: Well, they've been warning us for decades, you.
Speaker 5: Know, deformities, die offs, massive die offs. It's just like
Speaker 5: it's really hard to imagine how much more of a
Speaker 5: warning the amphibians could be giving us.
Speaker 4: You know, like.
Speaker 5: The the tap water you know, would kill all of
Speaker 5: the amphibians. Here at the Amphibian Foundation, we have to
Speaker 5: filter it so significantly and put it through all these
Speaker 5: processes just to make it safe.
Speaker 4: And that's the stuff that we like.
Speaker 5: Bathe bathe in all the time, ticket shower. It's lethal
Speaker 5: to amphibians, you know. It's just it's hard to think
Speaker 5: that we're not connected to this somehow, But it's like
Speaker 5: their amphibians are so sensitive due to that, you know,
Speaker 5: and diseases that we can move around and invertently can
Speaker 5: really be devastating because amphibian skin is so sensitive about
Speaker 5: and it doesn't handle these types of perturbations very well,
Speaker 5: whether that's pollution or agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 4: You know that you name it, it's impacting them.
Speaker 2: I think I was also reading that there's some thinking
Speaker 2: that amphibians are especially vulnerable to warm it to increasing temperatures,
Speaker 2: maybe more so than other classes of vertebrates are.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean they're so intimately tied to the water.
Speaker 5: Going back to the flatwood salamander, how risky is it
Speaker 5: to breed in a dry pond? That's their strategy, you know,
Speaker 5: but it's over millions of years, you know. They obviously
Speaker 5: wouldn't always work out for them, but more often than
Speaker 5: it wouldn't, it would work out. And now that that
Speaker 5: is shifting and the ponds are holding water at different
Speaker 5: times of the year than they have historically, that's very different.
Speaker 5: That's not something that amphibians can catch up to quickly enough,
Speaker 5: so they're very sensitive to even these small shifts.
Speaker 4: In the climate.
Speaker 3: Now we've been talking about the environmental challenges for amphibians,
Speaker 3: and also some of these other top down governmental and
Speaker 3: political challenges as well. On the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 3: you know, this brings to mind education and the public awareness,
Speaker 3: and I know another huge part of the Amphibian foundations
Speaker 3: is educational, both in terms of teaching future herpetologists and
Speaker 3: raising awareness of critical species. Have you observed an uptick
Speaker 3: in the public's enthusiasm for herbs in general and amphibians
Speaker 3: and salamanders in particular.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's a great question, and I think I think
Speaker 5: it's kind of mixed because I think the Internet probably
Speaker 5: has been really good for amphibians and reptiles, but then
Speaker 5: you also see a lot of people doing horrible things
Speaker 5: to them, you know, So it's like it's a double
Speaker 5: edged sword, I guess, you know, so it's really made
Speaker 5: up markets for some pretty horrible things. But ultimately I
Speaker 5: do think that there are there's more awareness of what's happening,
Speaker 5: and it certainly is easier for us to get our
Speaker 5: message out to the community.
Speaker 3: I don't want to discuss every all the horrible details necessarily,
Speaker 3: but when you mention horrible things you're talking about things
Speaker 3: involving say captive salamanders or herbs, or encounters with wild species.
Speaker 5: At that time, I was talking about encounters with wild
Speaker 5: species and the things that people do to them in
Speaker 5: the wild. Yeah, but a gat go either way. There's
Speaker 5: a study that just got shared with me. Someone was
Speaker 5: measuring the social media response. This was a group out
Speaker 5: of Ireland, I believe it could have been Scotland, about
Speaker 5: the social media impact on certain extinctions and they used
Speaker 5: the raps fringe limp tree frog that went extinct here
Speaker 5: in Atlanta as an example of the comparing because unfortunately
Speaker 5: there are several species that have gone extinct, and so
Speaker 5: it was measuring the impact and that when Toughie went
Speaker 5: extinct in Atlanta in twenty sixteen, that was a movement
Speaker 5: that was talked about for longer periods of time, maybe
Speaker 5: by not as many people as as as some of
Speaker 5: these other things, but it had a duration. It really
Speaker 5: spoke to a certain amount of people, very very profoundly.
Speaker 5: And so that that gave me a little bit of
Speaker 5: hope too as far as the the awareness, you know,
Speaker 5: because having having worked through an actual extinction once already,
Speaker 5: I just know that that feeling of such profound loss
Speaker 5: that you know, it really drives a lot of the
Speaker 5: work that we're currently still doing where we're teetering right
Speaker 5: on the edge here of some really bleak stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, in terms of like social media awareness of various species,
Speaker 3: I'm to understand that since we last spoke, Actle lottels
Speaker 3: were introduced into the popular Mindcraft video game, and that
Speaker 3: this has helped to fuel greater popularity for for for
Speaker 3: actual lottels. I'm curious of the amphibian and herpetology world
Speaker 3: have observed, like any impact from their rising popularity, Like
Speaker 3: people find them cute, they're like stuffed animals off them,
Speaker 3: and I guess maybe more people are trying to obtain
Speaker 3: them as pets. Does this have just kind of a
Speaker 3: neutral impact or is it a positive or negative effect?
Speaker 5: Do you think it's really hard to measure, especially since
Speaker 5: that species is extinct in the wild. You know, like
Speaker 5: it's doing really well in the pet trade and in captivity.
Speaker 5: But I'm not I'm curious how many of the enthusiasts
Speaker 5: are also aware of how bad it is for that
Speaker 5: species in the wild. And we call them Acxi lottels here,
Speaker 5: but in there and where they live. There are more
Speaker 5: than one species of our axe lottel or big big
Speaker 5: guilt neotenic salamanders, and those those species are still there,
Speaker 5: but a lot of them are in big trouble. So
Speaker 5: I would personally like to see a lot of this
Speaker 5: attention going towards those types of awareness projects or maybe
Speaker 5: even even fundraising. But ultimately I would call it a
Speaker 5: net neutral because I haven't seen any evidence of that.
Speaker 3: The Accele lottels you mentioned being extinct in the wild.
Speaker 3: I was recently listening to a podcast interview on the
Speaker 3: podcast Ologies with an Accele lottl scientist and they had
Speaker 3: mentioned that most of the Acx lottels that we have
Speaker 3: in the world in captivity are actually more French than Mexican.
Speaker 3: At this point, there's like, are They're all descended from
Speaker 3: a population that was taken out of Mexico by a
Speaker 3: French scientist many many years ago.
Speaker 5: Wow, this is news to me. Fascinating. Okay, so they're
Speaker 5: more French than Mexican. I know that there's a bunch
Speaker 5: that have also been mixed with other Ambistoma species and
Speaker 5: that they present as Acx lottels, but they might suddenly
Speaker 5: met MorphOS which would be a really good clue that
Speaker 5: that's not actually an xCE lotte if it metamorphosed, because
Speaker 5: xcelettles can't.
Speaker 3: Now, given that ax a Lottels seem to be relatively
Speaker 3: successful in captivity, does this pose a hurdle to educating
Speaker 3: folks about like the dangers and the challenges involved with
Speaker 3: these other species we've been talking about, maybe a tendency
Speaker 3: to think, oh, well, if you can raise ax lottos
Speaker 3: in captivity, if I can see when when I go,
Speaker 3: you know, to this facility in town and then I
Speaker 3: see them on the internet, they must be doing fine.
Speaker 3: We must have we must have it figured out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that would be a bad message to send.
Speaker 5: I think it's really the whole thing is really challenging,
Speaker 5: and we we try to like stay away from the
Speaker 5: pet trade angle and most things, and it's it's pretty discouraging,
Speaker 5: you know, and I would love to see it move
Speaker 5: towards more type sustainable types of things. We were on
Speaker 5: a nature preserve in Atlanta and still we get people's
Speaker 5: pets here all the time. They just released their pets
Speaker 5: on the nature preserve.
Speaker 4: It's really sad.
Speaker 5: And you know, we're talking about like turtles mostly, you know,
Speaker 5: and that's not good for the native turtles that are
Speaker 5: just trying to make a living, you know, And so
Speaker 5: I don't know, I know that's not totally related, but
Speaker 5: it's it's kind of all in the same ball of wax.
Speaker 3: Now, one of your outreach programs over the years has
Speaker 3: been the Biology of the Despised. I know we talked
Speaker 3: about this, and I think your last appearance on the
Speaker 3: podcast a lot of this involving snakes, venomous snakes, but
Speaker 3: also snakes that are mistaken for venomous snakes, as well
Speaker 3: as things like snapping turtles.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, did you you want me to just riff
Speaker 5: on that because I can't?
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, you're going yeah.
Speaker 5: Because you know, that is something that I remember talking
Speaker 5: with you guys about and I really appreciated that, and
Speaker 5: it's something that we've continued to expand upon. So this
Speaker 5: this weekend is our annual Biology of the Despised event
Speaker 5: at the Atlanta Science Festival, and so this year we're
Speaker 5: doing cotton mouths. So it's not a native Atlanta snake,
Speaker 5: but they're very hated here in Atlanta, even though they
Speaker 5: don't live here, and so we're highlighting them but we're
Speaker 5: also building our first course that's going to go beyond
Speaker 5: the amphibian and reptile tax We're going to go out
Speaker 5: and it's just going to be a full biology of
Speaker 5: the despised and highlighting invertebrates. You know, there's lots of
Speaker 5: despised stuff. We've been reaching casting a net far and
Speaker 5: wide about that. Maybe I'll reach out to you guys
Speaker 5: too to see if you have any suggestions for how
Speaker 5: we could expand, because we're just trying to cast the
Speaker 5: widest net possible and really give people an opportunity to
Speaker 5: showcase the species that they work with that are also
Speaker 5: despised and misunderstood and maligned. And you know, it's just
Speaker 5: all stemming from the fact that my field her petology
Speaker 5: was erected by a Swedish botanist just because he hated
Speaker 5: those groups. That's what amphibians and reptiles have in common,
Speaker 5: is that that dude hated them. That's the only reason
Speaker 5: they're together. It's just really kind of like a badge
Speaker 5: of honor thing.
Speaker 4: He called them.
Speaker 5: These are the foul and loathsome creatures.
Speaker 4: And so that's crazy, you know, it's really nuts.
Speaker 5: Because you know, amphibians and fish are more closely aligned.
Speaker 5: You might put reptiles and birds together, who knows, you know,
Speaker 5: But it's just really funny that that field has remained
Speaker 5: for two three hundred years already.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, I think it's it's always interesting to look
Speaker 3: at how media, particularly horror movies, depicts these various creatures,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, the creatures that are despised or are maligned,
Speaker 3: like they're often showing up as a centralized threat in
Speaker 3: some sort of horror film, be it a shark or certainly,
Speaker 3: we've seen so many killers snake movies over the years.
Speaker 3: We even have some killer frog movies. But I was
Speaker 3: just realizing the other day it was like, I don't
Speaker 3: think I've ever seen a killer salamander movie. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I had to do some digging around. It looks I
Speaker 3: was not aware of this. Something came out in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three called The Tank that features a giant salamander
Speaker 3: live creature like lives in somebody's basement meets cops. I
Speaker 3: was reading or you know eats people that you know
Speaker 3: that wander into the house.
Speaker 5: They're blowing my mind right now. I try to stay
Speaker 5: up on these things. That's great.
Speaker 3: And then the recent Fallout vouching for it, or I'm
Speaker 3: not vouching for it. I have not seen it. The
Speaker 3: recent Fallout television series is good, I can vouch for that,
Speaker 3: and it does have a big sylum mat salamander creature,
Speaker 3: like a mutated salamander oh tries to eat people. But
Speaker 3: aside from those, you know, I even I looked at
Speaker 3: the California Herp's website, which has a great like database
Speaker 3: of mostly older films, and like in any point point
Speaker 3: a herb shows up being a lizard of snake or
Speaker 3: what have you, and they have a page about salamanders,
Speaker 3: and most of the instances where salamander pops up in
Speaker 3: a film, it seems to have the role of being
Speaker 3: sort of a mystical encounter or some sort of like
Speaker 3: a almost like a supernatural communication or dream imagery. And
Speaker 3: I wonder what that says about our relationship thus far
Speaker 3: with salamanders. You know, it's like almost like seeing a
Speaker 3: fairy or a ghost.
Speaker 5: Well, that's a great point, you're it's making me think
Speaker 5: of this article I wrote read about this. I think
Speaker 5: it was like some Croatian brandy that's made with the
Speaker 5: salamander venom that it can it's way too powerful of
Speaker 5: an aphrodisiac. So according to what I was reading, like
Speaker 5: you would just read with whatever was in the room
Speaker 5: with you at the point, if you had any whether
Speaker 5: that be a chair or a goat, I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's just really fun because like you think of that
Speaker 5: a lot. It's like eye of newt or whatever or
Speaker 5: some of these really, I mean, newts have some of
Speaker 5: the most toxic compounds known to science in them, and
Speaker 5: some people do recreationally do some newt, you know, or
Speaker 5: toads or something like that. But it's it's interesting because
Speaker 5: I agree that, like when you think about it, that
Speaker 5: there's more mysteriousness there with the salamanders than maybe with
Speaker 5: the frogs.
Speaker 3: Now coming back a little bit to conservation topics with
Speaker 3: with with salamanders and newts and so forth, I mean,
Speaker 3: there are also a lot of research angles that go
Speaker 3: beyond just merely preserving the species. Like I'm understand that
Speaker 3: actual models feature into a number of different scientific research
Speaker 3: programs with some huge potentials for human health down the road.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess it's always the case with any
Speaker 3: species that we losing them is not only like a
Speaker 3: loss of the planet it is like selfishly potentially a
Speaker 3: huge loss for us because who knows what secrets could
Speaker 3: be unlocked with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a that's an excellent point.
Speaker 5: And a lot of the talks that I give, especially
Speaker 5: if I'm not preaching to the choir, I do a
Speaker 5: lot of audiences that are already sold on amphibians. But
Speaker 5: when I'm reaching out to a new audience, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to make a case for amphibians, and so I
Speaker 5: always start with bugs. They eat tons of bugs, That's
Speaker 5: what they're meant.
Speaker 4: To do, you know.
Speaker 5: They some of them specialize in mosquitoes. And then I
Speaker 5: run through all the reasons why you should think amphibians
Speaker 5: are worth saving. And then the last argument I make
Speaker 5: is the pharmaceutical value or the research value, or the
Speaker 5: impact on human health. And there are so many compounds
Speaker 5: in the amphibian skin that have great significant pharmaceutical value,
Speaker 5: blocking viral transmission with one hundred percent effectiveness, relieving pain
Speaker 5: more effectively than morphine without any addiction consequences. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of stuff in there. And then at least two
Speaker 5: of the things I just mentioned are from critically endangered
Speaker 5: species that we know from compounds in their skin, and
Speaker 5: so a lot of it's easy to think that we
Speaker 5: are losing species before we've had a chance to even
Speaker 5: look at that.
Speaker 3: Now, for any young or not so young people out
Speaker 3: there they're interested in amphibians and herpetology in general, what
Speaker 3: steps could they or should they be taking if they're
Speaker 3: interested in seriously pursuing it.
Speaker 5: We've really, we've really focused a lot on providing an
Speaker 5: entry way for people into the field. You know, and
Speaker 5: we're based in Atlanta, so for folks that are in
Speaker 5: the area, it might be a little easier because we
Speaker 5: have so many voluntar here opportunities for people that can
Speaker 5: afford to volunteer.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's it's proven to be a stepping stone to well
Speaker 5: maybe if you wanted to go to school for it
Speaker 5: or get some training in some capacities like that. Part
Speaker 5: of this job has been extremely rewarding.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: And then we've been able to bring that to the
Speaker 5: online community as well. Through through our educational programs. We
Speaker 5: offered what was meaningless several years ago, a certificate and
Speaker 5: master you're a master herpetologist at that point if you
Speaker 5: complete the course successfully. But now it's not meaningless. Now
Speaker 5: it actually has helped people to get into graduate schools,
Speaker 5: help people to get jobs at zoos and at agencies,
Speaker 5: you know. So then that feels really good to see
Speaker 5: that we're providing a way, a mechanism because we really
Speaker 5: need all hands on deck. There's there's plenty of work
Speaker 5: to be done. We need as many people as possible
Speaker 5: jazzed about these things and wanting to help, and so
Speaker 5: just being able to contribute to that in any way
Speaker 5: has been really I'm really grateful for that opportunity.
Speaker 3: And you have the Junior Master of Herpetology program as well.
Speaker 3: My child is a graduate of that program.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and it's really really great.
Speaker 5: And so you know a lot of people, young young
Speaker 5: learners want to take our adult classes, and we don't
Speaker 5: let them unless they've already been certified as a Junior
Speaker 5: Master herpetologist and already proven themselves. That's the only way
Speaker 5: into those programs. And it's just been really great to
Speaker 5: watch this community grow.
Speaker 3: Now, how about the how about the rest of the
Speaker 3: folks out there? Like what can the average person do
Speaker 3: to help out amphibians and other herbs, say, in their backyard,
Speaker 3: in their local area.
Speaker 5: I love getting these types of questions and so just uh,
Speaker 5: so so I don't forget. Let me just mention the
Speaker 5: U r L backyard dot frogs need our help dot
Speaker 5: org uh, and that is a link to our frog
Speaker 5: But it queues up just the articles I've collected over
Speaker 5: the years or written about how to make your yard
Speaker 5: more amphibian friendly. There's several articles in there about how
Speaker 5: to build a wetland if you're interested. But there's lots
Speaker 5: of different things what to do if you get frogs
Speaker 5: in your pool. You know, some strong arguments for leaving
Speaker 5: leaf litter in certain areas of your yard. You know
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. But it really goes through and
Speaker 5: I've been collecting.
Speaker 4: That stuff for like ten or fifteen years by now.
Speaker 3: Awesome, Right now, we've already mentioned the Atlanta Science Festival,
Speaker 3: which when this episode comes out, that will be ongoing.
Speaker 3: So if you are in the Atlanta area, planned to
Speaker 3: be in the Atlanta area during its a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks run, you know, look that up. But what else
Speaker 3: is on the horizon for the Amphibian Foundation here?
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we like the Atlanta Science Festival is a big
Speaker 5: deal for us. We do about usually do four events
Speaker 5: each Science Festival and the last day of The festival
Speaker 5: is the Expo in Piedmont Park and we'll be there
Speaker 5: so people can come and see us if they if.
Speaker 4: They want uh.
Speaker 5: And then you know, we're going to be launching into
Speaker 5: our next semester of our Conservation Research Bridge program, So
Speaker 5: that's our gap year program where we have students come
Speaker 5: from all over the country to work hands on you know,
Speaker 5: like I mentioned, this is an all hands on deck situation,
Speaker 5: but what we do is very unique and so it
Speaker 5: really resonates very strongly with a small number of people
Speaker 5: around the country who come and spend one to three semesters,
Speaker 5: Like we just get right into the swamps. So it's
Speaker 5: really ideal for certain people. And so that's that's going
Speaker 5: to get us occupied right right now. We're also surveying
Speaker 5: for gopher frog eggs, which is George's rarest frog, and
Speaker 5: so they should be breeding any moment now. As soon
Speaker 5: as we can detect some eggs, we'll bring them back
Speaker 5: to head start them here at the Amphibian Foundation, which
Speaker 5: means get them through their sensitive larval stage, and then
Speaker 5: we release babygopher frogs. That's usually in the middle of
Speaker 5: the summer. We're releasing baby gopher frogs nice. It's good stuff.
Speaker 5: If you like that kind of thing, it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a hoot.
Speaker 4: Is it is a hoot.
Speaker 5: Guys are welcome to come along for a frog release
Speaker 5: if you'd like.
Speaker 3: All right, Mark, well, thanks for coming on the show
Speaker 3: and chatting with us.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. It was my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks again to Mark Mandika for taking
Speaker 2: time to chat with us here on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind. If you want to learn more about the
Speaker 2: Amphibian Foundation, subscribe to the Amphibian Foundation newsletter, or learn
Speaker 2: about ways to help them out, such as donation or volunteering,
Speaker 2: go to Amphibianfoundation dot org.
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