The Amphibian Foundation's Frog Blog

This semester, the Garden's Department of Research and Conservation collaborated with GA Tech's School of Biology to offer a research course in aspects of  functional morphology . As one of my favorite subjects of all time, functional morphology — or biomechanics  — investigates animal movements (often with the help of x-ray and/or high-speed videography) to gain a better understanding of how animals successfully project their tongues, locomote, capture prey, swim, burrow or practically anything one can measure and sequence. The Biomechanics of Amphibian Feeding class of 2014 . From the top left: Alison Burger, Allison Miles, Emily Stephens, Rachel Whitmire, Courtney Pettiford, Erin Gish. Middle left: Paul Sanders, Leslie Phillips (Garden Teaching Assistant), Alexis Noel (GA Tech Teaching Assistant) Courtnae Ramser, Anna Morocco, Blake Christianson. Front Row: Instructors Dr David Hu and Mark Mandica The class was offered to 10 graduating seniors at GA Tech and the pu...

On Friday, The Garden was featured on the Weather Channel's morning show AMHQ. Sam Champion, Maria LaRosa, Mike Bettes (pictured above) and Anaridis Rodriguez were here to do the show and conduct interviews with Garden staff, including me — for a moment — to talk about the Amphibian Conservation Program. To see the video, click below ... The producers wanted to have amphibians on the show, and originally requested some of our most colorful amphibians to go live on national television. I was planning on showcasing Phyllobates terribilis , a bright yellow and potentially lethal Poison Dart Frog as well as Cruziohyla calcarifer , one of the larger Phyllomedusines (Leaf frogs) with brilliant yellow-orange flash coloration hidden by a leaf green dorsum. Friday morning, however, with temperatures still in the 40's, I informed them wouldn't be safe for our tropical amphibians, and substituted them with 2 of our native amphibian species. Lithobates capito , the Carolin...

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit/references Cornell assembled a great resource of tools and references. Thanks Amelia!

Atlanta Botanical Garden Frog Pod

Elizabeth Montgomery from the AJC wrote a very nice piece on our Amphibian Conservation Program. Images and captions on the link below. Thanks, Elizabeth! Photos: The frogs at Atlanta Botanical Garden

The next video shows the developing Wood Frog embryos (almost tadpoles!) inside of the eggs. Trying out movement for the first time. Thanks again to Tracy Hicks for supplying this video!