Atlanta Botanical garden to feature sculptured plants - Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5
Atlanta Botanical garden to feature sculptured plants - Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5
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Exhibit Update ...
One of our new exhibit animals ( Dendrobates tinctorius azureus ) donated by the Georgia Aquarium These beautiful frogs are getting used to their new habitat in the Fuqua Conservatory lobby Weekend visitors looking for frogs after I told them there were 17 frogs and 4 tadpoles in this Costa Rica exhibit. There is a newly metamorphosed Lemur froglet in the center of the image. There are 11 critically endangered Lemur frogs ( Agalychnis lemur ) in the Costa Rica exhibit. Two of them (pictured above) are metamorphs, meaning they were recently tadpoles. Lemur frogs sleep under leaves — you can see how they would be impossible to find from the front of the exhibit. Here is a video of two of our adult Lemur frogs, in amplexus on exhibit. If you watch and listen closely, you can here the male (the one on her back) calling!
Ask the frog staff: How many tadpoles actually survive into adulthood?
Hi Mark. A frog friend and I were at the lily pond today and it was rife with tadpoles of various sizes and stages. Two questions: 1) It looked like the two ducks might be feeding on them ... do they? 2) How many tadpoles actually survive to frog adulthood? — Christine C. This particular topic has come up a lot recently, and one of our visitors beautifully photographed a heron eating a rather large bullfrog out of the lily pond in the Children's Garden . It was a graphic interaction, but demonstrates how vital amphibians are in food webs and one of the reasons we use to illustrate how important it is to keep amphibians around. Almost everything eats them, or their tadpoles, or their eggs ... or all three. Many animals eat frogs exclusively (including some frog species!), and the herons at the Garden obviously love them. I have seen ducks eating tadpoles quite rapidly. In fact, my amphibian class last summer quantified how quickly different aquatic birds could ...
At the Gopher Frog Release Site
Williams Bluff. The beautiful release site of head-started Gopher frogs on protected Nature Conservancy land. This week, I had the opportunity to join Dr Maerz from UGA with Robert Hill and David Brothers from Zoo Atlanta to help sample Gopher frogs at the release site in Early County, GA. Gopher frogs ( Lithobates capito ) inhabit burrows but don't build them themselves. They 'share' underground accommodations made by Gopher tortoises, Pocket gophers and mother nature (i.e. tree stumps). It's not easy to find a frog which lives underground ... and this was my first opportunity to use a camera scope (am LED lit camera at the end of a 20' snake) so we could see down these long subterranean burrows. We were looking for released Gopher frogs that were still making a living at the release site. Dr John Maerz (UGA) and Robert Hill (Zoo Atlanta) sampling a Gopher tortoise burrow with the camera scope Zoo Atlanta's Robert Hill (top) and David Brot...
Exhibit update
Lemur frogs ( Agalychnis lemur ) , when you are lucky enough to see one awake, are quite charismatic The Lemur frog s have been calling and showing other signs of an interest in breeding on exhibit! Here is a pair in amplexus. Leslie Phillips examining a Glass frog and Lemur frog sharing the same leaf. Green Spiny Toads have become an attraction in the Panama exhibit
