Kelsey Jordan Exit Show, featuring frogs from our Conservation Collection!

Kelsey Jordan, an intern in the Garden's Department of Conservation Research and student at the University of Georgia held her exit show this past Monday at The Lamar Dodd School of Art.

Kelsey is completing the scientific illustration program at UGA and her exhibit featured water color paintings as well as pencil sketches of frog species from the Atlanta Botanical Garden's amphibian conservation program. Her work highlights the unique parental care adaptations of the frog species she selected.

Kelsey and I on either side of her Rhinoderma painting. Darwin's frogs exhibit one of the more bizarre strategies of parental care. As illustrated here, froglets emerge post-development from the mouth of their father! In this species, a male will snatch up the larvae in his mouth as they hatch. He protects them in his vocal sac until development is complete.

I had the privilege of working with her at the onset of her thesis, and was amazed at her preliminary sketches throughout the collections and exhibits at the Garden. I included some of the pencil sketches in this post as I think they are equally fantastic.

Anotheca spinosa, the Crowned Tree frog was sketched in our frogPOD. Here is a female feeding her tadpoles infertile eggs. A necessary adaptation to breeding in nutrient poor tree holes

Gastrotheca cornuta, the Eyelash Marsupial frog. Here the female (right) is holding the developing embryos in a pouch on her back

The Phantasmal Poison frog (Epipedobates tricolor) in typical dendrobatid fashion, transports tadpoles on its back until it finds a suitable water source to deposit its young.

Pencil sketch of Phyllobates terribilis, from the Colombia exhibit in the conservatory lobby

Beautiful pencil sketch of Anotheca spinosa

Pencil sketch of Epipedobates tricolor