![\"the](\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/media\/photo\/2010-03\/52552380.jpg\" "\\"the")
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Some like it hot. Apparently, the endangered mountain yellow-legged frog is not among them.<\/p>\n
The
\n3-inch-long amphibians much prefer it cold as melting snow. So
\nconservationists at the San Diego Zoo have placed two dozen of the
\nnearly extinct frogs in refrigerators they joshingly refer to as
\n"Valentine’s Day retreats" in hopes the amphibians will emerge with the
\nurge. To mate, that is.<\/p>\n
The big chill at the zoo’s Institute for
\nConservation Research represents one of the nation’s most ambitious
\nwildlife reintroduction experiments.<\/p>\n
If it is successful, the
\nfrogs could produce upward of 6,000 tadpoles next month — all of them
\nscheduled for a spring homecoming in a remote San Jacinto Mountains
\nstream from which they have been absent for a decade.<\/p>\n
Scientists hope many of those tadpoles will mature and produce new generations in the wild, paving the way for the Rana muscosa<\/em> population to reestablish residency in Southern California and grow exponentially.\n<\/p>\n "Will Mountain Since the 1960s, the species has been decimated by Today, fewer than 200 Their In their native habitat, the Parental discretion is advised for what follows: "A male Sperm "In the laboratory, the hard work comes when we’ve got a The Two years later, institute researchers discovered a Now the institute has 61 All the tadpoles produced in the laboratory will be The recovery The Fresno Chaffee Zoo recently received about 100 tadpoles rescued last summer from the Station fire area. <\/p>\n The Los Angeles Zoo and the Living Desert in Palm Desert will each get 10 adult frogs for captive breeding purposes.<\/p>\n In "A few — Louis Sahagun<\/p>\n Stay up-to-date on animal news: Follow Unleashed on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo: The endangered mountain yellow-legged frog prefers it cold. Some like it hot. Apparently, the endangered mountain yellow-legged frog is not among them. The 3-inch-long amphibians much prefer it cold as melting snow. So conservationists at the San Diego Zoo have placed two dozen of the nearly extinct frogs in refrigerators they joshingly refer to as "Valentine’s Day retreats" in hopes the amphibians will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nit work? We think so," said Jeffrey Lemm, a zoo research coordinator.
\n"A month from now, there could be tubs of tadpoles all over the place.
\nEventually, we may have thousands of adult frogs in self-sustaining
\npopulations for the first time in half a century."<\/p>\n
\nyellow-legged frogs thrived for thousands of years in hundreds of
\nstreams cascading down the San Bernardino, San Gabriel and San Jacinto
\nmountains. <\/p>\n
\nan array of threats: fires, mudslides, pesticides, fungal infections,
\nloss of habitat as a result of development, and the appetites of
\nnonnative trout, bullfrogs and crayfish.<\/p>\n
\nof their descendants are believed to exist in nine isolated wild
\npopulations, including a group in the San Gabriel Mountains’ Devils
\nCanyon that survived last year’s devastating Station fire.<\/p>\n
\nminuscule, scattered population gives mountain yellow-legged frogs the
\ndistinction of being one of the most endangered amphibians on the
\nplanet. The most intimate details of their mating behavior are the
\nfocus of a master’s thesis project being conducted at the institute by
\nresearch technician Frank Santana.<\/p>\n
\nfrogs flock to streams gushing with spring snowmelt. Males announce
\ntheir availability for amphibian amour with a low-pitched underwater
\nbark. <\/p>\n
\ngets a good grip of a female with his forearms, and the female, if
\nshe’s in the mood, let’s him," Santana said. "Then the male thrusts his
\nwhole body to stimulate the release of her eggs. The female goes into
\ncontractions as both arch their backs to line up their cloacae."<\/p>\n
\nand eggs are released simultaneously. Tadpoles emerge from the eggs
\nabout three weeks later. In the wild, only 3% to 5% mature into adult
\nfrogs.<\/p>\n
\nbazillion 2-millimeter-long tadpoles on our hands in need of daily
\nwater changes, and meals of frozen lettuce and fish food," Santana said.<\/p>\n
\nzoo’s recovery program was launched in the summer of 2006, with 82
\ntadpoles rescued from a drying creek in the San Bernardino National
\nForest.<\/p>\n
\nclutch of 200 eggs in one of their tanks. However, the frogs were
\nyounger than is typical for breeding and only a handful of the eggs
\nwere fertile. The institute became the first to breed a yellow-legged
\nfrog in captivity when one of those eggs produced a tadpole that
\nmatured into a still-surviving adult.<\/p>\n
\nfrogs, including the 16 females in the refrigerator — each one of
\nthem, Lemm said, "looking nice and healthy and bulging with 200 to 300
\neggs."<\/p>\n
\nreintroduced into a mountain stream that U.S. Geological Survey
\nbiologists have determined is free of predators.<\/p>\n
\neffort has been funded by the California Department of Transportation
\nto mitigate for emergency work to stabilize a slope near the frog’s
\nhabitat on California 330 in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is part
\nof an ongoing collaborative effort of government and nonprofit partners
\nto increase the number of frogs in native habitat and in captive
\nbreeding programs.<\/p>\n
\nthe meantime, federal wildlife authorities are developing measures to
\nreduce the effect of human activities in areas where the yellow-legged
\nfrog is still found and may be reintroduced. That includes a remote
\nstretch of Tahquitz Creek in the San Jacinto Wilderness near Idyllwild,
\nwhere two yellow-legged frogs were discovered last year.<\/p>\n
\nyears ago, there wasn’t even a captive breeding program for these
\nfrogs," Santana said. "Now, we are hoping to reestablish populations by
\nmimicking their natural cycles. For these frogs, that means winter
\nhibernation, spring thaw and lots of tadpoles. Hopefully."<\/p>\n
\nCredit: Ken Bohn \/ San Diego Zoo<\/span> \/ March <\/span>3<\/span>, 2009<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"