Question

1-Frogs are often considered a good indicator species. Explain what characteristics of frogs make them such good indicators of the health of their environment.

2-Ernie is strictly carnivorous, ignoring all health warnings. Ernie consumes 74 000 kJ of meat every day. Agricultural land can support this type of diet at 835.0 kJ/m2 of land used. Determine how much land it takes to support Ernie’s lifestyle.

Answer 1

1) Ecologists and environmental scientists use a wide range of plants and animals as “indicator species” to get an idea about ecosystem health of streams and forests. Some of these species are tolerant of pollution such as certain bacteria or algae so their presence indicates the presence of pollutants like sewage. Other species are intolerant of pollution or environmental disturbance such as mayflies or many fish species so their presence is an indicator of a healthy ecosystem, while their absence can indicate problems. One group of organisms most sensitive to environmental change appears to be amphibians, which includes frogs, toads and salamanders.

One thing that the frogs are considered such  sensitive environmental indicators is their skin.Unlike reptiles, birds and mammals, amphibians are still partially tied to the water, spending at least part of their life cycle as eggs and juveniles in an aquatic environment. The eggs don’t have a hard shell around them like the eggs of reptiles and birds, and must remain in the water, or they will dry out. The juvenile forms, or tadpoles, breathe through gills like fish, extracting oxygen from the water. Not until they develop into adults do amphibians possess lungs (well, most of them anyway), allowing them to leave the water.

Even as adults, most amphibians have to keep their skin moist by staying near water or damp areas, since they breathe partially or entirely through their skin. (There are a few species of salamanders called “lungless salamanders” because they have no lungs and depend completely on their skin to breathe.) Because their skin is so porous and absorbs gases, like oxygen, and liquids, like water, amphibians at all stages of life are sensitive to environmental changes, especially many types of pollution that may be in the atmosphere, water or soil.

Amphibians’ thin skins help them drink and breathe, but also make them susceptible to environmental contaminants, particularly agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical chemicals. For example, atrazine is the most widely used herbicide in the US with an estimated 61 to 73 million pounds used per year during the 1990s. Scientific studies have found that atrazine may cause a variety of cancers and act as an endocrine disruptor, mimicking the feminizing hormone estrogen and harming human and animal reproductive and hormone systems. Atrazine is generally applied in spring and can accumulate in amphibian breeding pools. Laboratory studies have shown that atrazine can chemically sterilize tadpoles at levels well below the EPA maximum allowable level for drinking water. Although lawsuits brought against the EPA by the Natural Resources Defense Council date back to 1999, the EPA announced on October 31 2003 that it had negotiated a deal with industry that would not require any new restrictions on atrazine use.

Other organochlorine pollutants (e.g., DDT, PCBs, dioxins) can also act as endocrine disruptors, inducing similar feminizing effects in amphibians. It has been demonstrated that these responses are occurring in nature, but it is yet unclear what long-term effect they will have on wild populations.

Amphibians have been likened to canaries in the coal mine: just as miners used sensitive canaries to warn them of toxic gases in the mines, amphibians might be warning us of unsafe environmental conditions that could eventually seriously impact our health. Could we be similarly affected by these widespread endocrine disruptors, or are we already? Atrazine, for example, has been detected in more than 1 million Americans’ drinking water at levels higher than EPA’s drinking water standard. Some human studies suggest that the average sperm count of adult men in certain populations is significantly decreased, as much as 50% of what it was two generations ago. Are we also suffering the same feminizing effects of agrochemicals, industrial waste, and other estrogen-mimics that we see affecting amphibians so drastically.

Amphibians are also vital components of their ecosystems. In the 1970s, it was discovered that the northern redback salamander (Plethodon cinereus) was possibly the most abundant vertebrate in eastern US forests, exceeding the biomass of all the bird or mammal species combined. Amphibians feed primarily on insects and other invertebrates. It was estimated that a single population of ~1,000 cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) could consume almost five million invertebrates in one year. Clearly they serve as significant predators of small invertebrates, as abundant prey for larger predators, and as a vital link in the food web between the two. In areas of the world where amphibians have declined, there has been an increase in invertebrate pests that damage crops and that carry human diseases.

Amphibians have also played a vital role in human culture. While in some cultures frogs and toads have been despised and regarded as evil, other cultures have embraced them as life-giving keepers of the rains or agents of fertility and good luck. Some simply use them for food. Amphibians have been both cherished and persecuted by different cultures as characters in fantasy stories, ingredients in folk medicine, and as spiritual beings.