Evan Harris (2017)

Many times

I grew up on a farm in Australia. When I was in high school, I started to discover the diversity of frogs on the property (current count is 13 species) and started to really enjoy looking for them/photographing them. Then I discovered their plight due to the chytrid fungus and wanted to help. Research seemed the logical choice.

The common green tree frog was one of the first frogs I found on the farm and is still one of my favourite frogs to interact with. They're super docile and lovely.

In the Australian system, there isn't any coursework. If you need a skill, you learn it on the job, learn from journals, learn from someone who knows or go to a workshop. Workshops I went to were mostly for statistics, particularly analysis of mark-recapture data.

The levels of parental care are what always astound me. There are species that raise their tadpoles in their stomach (sadly extinct, but my old lab is working to resurrect them), Darwin's frogs raise theirs in their vocal sacs, Pipa pipa raise their eggs in their back skin, Assa darlingtoni raise their tadpoles in pouches (I've worked on this species). There are a huge number of species who will guard their eggs - even though they are almost completely harmless. Here's a father protecting his eggs

Also, there's a super common species in eastern Australia where the males will fight using a sharp thumb bone that protrudes through their skin. You often find males completely covered in scars.

I really like chubby frogs, such as the turtle frog or Asian painted frog. For non-amphibians, I love mudskippers.

The global amphibian declines. Until the 80s, amphibians were remarkably resilient to humans. They hadn't declined much compared to mammals, birds or other groups. Despite their reputation for being sensitive.

But, a single disease (a chytrid fungus) has completely changed that. And now, in the past few years, another chytrid has started wiping out European salamanders. If this chytrid gets into the Americas, we're going to have another major extinction event in just thirty years (North America has an incredible diversity of salamanders).

We need to stop moving frogs around the world. This shouldn't be hard. Crack down on the amphibian pet trade and stop trading live frogs for food. Doesn't look promising though.

1) Academia is incredibly flawed, but I'll choose just one issue. Academic careers are defined by high 'impact', which is essentially how many citations your papers receive. The highest impact papers in conservation are those that describe the problem. This is an important part of conservation, but because these papers get the most citations, people who publish them are more successful, they get a higher proportion of the grants and get the positions where they can actually do research.

Conservation biology has described many problems to death. And yet, people who continue to publish about, say, how deforestation is bad for biodiversity continue to get citations and therefore the jobs. And a lot of the people who try and actually work on these problems get squeezed out of the system.

2) Chytrid breaks my heart, and shy of pulling species out of the wild, I don't see a way forward. It's impossible to manage a disease on a large scale and in the wild. There are some examples of recovery, but it is bleak.

3) Use your undergrad to volunteer as much as possible! Get yourself known as a reliable and intelligent worker by as many people in the field as you can.

I'd say chances of finding them in the wild are close to zero. They are the most searched for of the extinct frogs in Australia. I think there's good chance of finding a few species that have disappeared, but not Rheos.

Last time I heard an update, the lab had gotten fertilised eggs to the blastula stage, but they don't progress further. There was a documentary about it last week in Australia, but I haven't watched it yet (don't know if this link will work for you). It may be more up-to-date than my information, but I hadn't heard any major developments in a while. A lot of cloning is trial and error, and it's made especially harder because they're working with 30-year-old cells from the bottom of a freezer.

Thanks :)

Litoria splendida is the scientific name for the Magnificent tree frog. They're only found in the north-west of Australia and are, as the name suggests, splendid. They live in gorges and are characterised by a large gland on the top of their head, gorgeous sulphur-coloured spots, and seem to be the largest frogs in Australia.

IRL, infrequently. On reddit...

I do not - it would make me sad. And I live in Hong Kong, so there is ample opportunity.

I guess toads, but that's a very tough question.

Nah, my apartment is only 250 square ft. I don't have the space.

I only know numbers for Australia and Hong Kong. You can either work in private industry (as an environmental consultant), who make 50k+. Senior levels can pay pretty well. There's a decent amount of work in consulting, a lot of my herpo friends are consultants now.

You can work in the public service (env. scientists, museums etc.). In Australia, these jobs pay nicely, in HK they do not.

You can work in academia. Pay varies wildly. In Australia, PhD earn very little (20-30k). Similar in HK, but they also need to pay fees, which take about a third of their income. After PhD, Australian pay is nice (70-90k for a postdoc), but the job security is horrendous. HK, pay is worse at the postdoc level, but quickly overtakes Australia after the postdoc level. Profs are paid very well.

There are also NGOs for conservation work. Generally pay is very low.

I'm enjoying teaching for now, but I suspect this may change in the future. I am itching to do more conservation work.

I got through the system pretty quickly. Three years of undergrad, a year of honours (honours isn't very common internationally - it's essentially a one year research program) and three years of PhD.

In the US, it's common for people to do a 3-4 year undergrad, 2 year masters and 5 year PhD. I'm pretty glad I didn't go through the US system.

Go to the wet tropics. Enjoy everything there, because it's amazing and we can't seem to stop destroying it. And explore at night, that's when forests come alive.

It might be found elsewhere - that's just what popped up on my Facebook feed.

1) The main thing is if you handle one frog, don't handle another. Normal people have little risk of spreading it, as it dies pretty easily. Also, in Australia, it's pretty much spread everywhere that it will. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful, cause there could be more dangerous strains, but it spreads very fast naturally.

2) Not really a misconception, but.. Australians treat cane toads like they aren't animals. They are. If you have to kill them (which I think we do), do it as humanely as possible.

Saltwater crocodile. They live a long time, spend most their day basking and won't get eaten by anything (except maybe humans).

Extant amphibians only really meet two out of the three reasons I gave. But, if I can choose extinct animals. I'd go with Eryops. Cause they do meet those criteria, and they're badass.

I chose it because I wanted to help frogs - we had them on the farm where I grew up (wild frogs, not farmed frogs).

I don't like eating frogs - it would make me sad. There are also issues with the frog trade, which is causing some species to decline.

Technically, the chazzwazzer was an introduced frog. But I'd definitely consider it. My Nan discovered a frog, but it was decades before the Simpsons.

Aww, bless! 💚

The amphibian research centre based in Melbourne has done some amazing work. Particularly with saving corroborees from chytrid.

It's pretty fucked up when the bakers are getting arrested.