Publicity for Nitya’s pet-trade paper

Not content with having produced a very popular paper on the pet-trade in amphibians (see blog post here or read the article here), Nitya went on to write a popular article for The Conversation Africa, which has garnered even more attention.

In his Conversation piece, Nitya explains more about the very real dangers that are associated with the pet-trade. Firstly, for animals that are collected from the wild, and for those that are mass bred in captivity. One of the problems that we face is that traders are looking for new species all the time, and this constant search for new ‘products’ is likely to lead to exploitation, and the danger of releasing lots of propagules of a new invasion. He underlines that there is responsibility across the board, from traders to owners.

This story was picked up by eNCA, a TV broadcasting company that covers the African continent. Nitya was interviewed live by Jeremy Maggs, and shared his thoughts on why more attention needs to be paid to the growing trade in exotic pets. You can watch the interview in full on YouTube

Always looking for a story with #MohantyMagic, The Hindu picked up the story and wrote their own piece on the article. They even used a sound bite from Nitya’s co-author!

Interestingly, the Conversation article has been picked up by other news outlets including Infurmation, a site promoting responsibility for pet lovers! Let’s hope that Nitya’s message strikes a chord.

Effects of temperature on the physiology of three African frogs

Some of you will remember Mohlamatsane ‘Mac’ Mokhatla and his work on three species of widespread African frogs: the principally aquatic African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), stream-breeding common river frog (Amietia delalandii), and the largely terrestrial raucous toad (Sclerophrys capensis). Keen readers will remember that one of Mac’s species changed its name three times during the course of his PhD (see here)! Well, some of that work was immortalised today in a paper summarising the physiology work that Mac did on these three frogs. 

While there’s been quite a lot of work done on the physiology of frogs, most of these studies are done in the northern hemisphere on temperate frogs with similar biologies. Mac chose three very different species: platannas that spend most of their time in water, toads that are mostly terrestrial, and river frogs that spend much of their time jumping from land to water and back. 

The results suggest that vapour pressure deficit (an important trait for frogs that need to remain hydrated) better predicted rates of evaporative water loss than ambient temperature in toads and river frogs. 

Read more about Mac's thesis here or read more the paper here:

Mokhatla M, Measey J, Smit B.2019.The role of ambient temperature and body mass on body temperature, standard metabolic rate and evaporative water loss in southern African anurans of different habitat specialisation.PeerJ7:e7885https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7885

Jean Secondi visits from U Angers

Natasha Kruger has spent the past 3 years spending Summer in South Africa, and then spending the next Summer in Angers with Jean Secondi. We’ve featured some of this travelling on the MeaseyLab blog before (see here and here), and also some of the work that Natasha produced (see here). 

Finally, after 3 years of waiting, Jean visited Stellenbosch to familiarise himself with the native habitat ofXenopus laevis(which he knows all too well from years of studies on the invasion in France), to spend some important time working with Natasha, and to attend the African Amphibian Working Group (AAWG) in George. 

We took Jean along on a long weekend to our long term monitoring site for the Cape Platanna in Kleinmond. Sadly, we didn’t find any African clawed frogs in their usual hauntings and all of the Kleinmond sites that normally containedXenopus gilliwere completely dry. We did however, manage to sample a site with Cape platannas in Betty’s Bay. We even found one animal that Andre de Villiers had marked way back in 2014!

It was great having Jean visit the lab, and we really hope that he also enjoyed himself and will take good memories of South Africa back to Angers. We are also really looking forward seeing him again during our visit to Lyon next February to attend Natasha’s defense!

18th African Amphibian Working Group (AAWG)

My first AAWG was back in 1996, when I was still finishing my PhD at Bristol University. It was the only conference that I attended during the entirety of my PhD studies, and it happened in Bristol - yes, that exotic far flung location that I had been saving myself up for…

This year, the 18th AAWG was held in the town of George, in the Western Cape, South Africa from 7-8 October 2019. The venue was the Garden Route Botanical Gardens, George. George is close to the Outeniqua Mountains, and is the home to a range of interesting frogs includingBreviceps fuscus,Afrixalus knysnae(pictured above) andHeleophryne regis.

We had a lot of fun listening to lots of different talks about amphibians from all over the continent. The CIB was well represented with talks from Anneke Schoeman, Natasha Kruger, John Measey, Mac Mokhatla and Sarah Davies (see pic!).

There were a bunch of talks from the MeaseyLab. See below for titles: