Malagasy Rainbow Frog

I may be posted in a not very regular manner for the next month and a half. We are doing a long distance move soon and I will likely have a few periods where I have no internet connection. (It is also going to cut into the Art quite a bit). Things should get back to normal after that.

Art

work on ceramic parts of rabbit and not flower but soldier fly

Animal

Photo by Franco Andreone

The Malagasy rainbow frog (Scaphiophryne gottlebei) lives in narrow sandy canyons in the Isalo Massif area of Madagascar. They burrow in the sandy substrate much of the time and will climb the vertical rocky walls of the canyons they live in for several meters. Tadpoles of this species have a psammonektonic feeding behavior durning the day the sit along the bottom at a 45 degree angle and filter feed on the substrate then at night they swim freely feeding as well. They are critically endangered for a variety of reasons habitat destruction logging, fire, and overgrazing being the big one. There is also a great deal of concern about sapphire mining activities in their range. It has also been determined that a significant cap needs to be put on the number of individuals collected for the pet trade the Edge suggests no more then 1000 individuals per year. While they recover very well from individual predation their range is too small to sustain the level of collection that currently occurs, so it is currently very damaging. While they have not yet successfully bred and fully reared in captivity it is thought that there is reasonably good potential that they can be bred in captive conditions, it is the hoped that extremely limited collection will allow a breeding captive population to be established.

Link to the Edge amphibian and weird mammal conservation charity