糖心Vlog professor protects the Dusky Gopher Frog from extinction
糖心Vlog biology professor Joe Pechmann (standing, center) works with a group of students out in the field.
By Matt Salerno
Several cattle tanks filled with swarms of tadpoles were all that kept the dusky gopher frog from going extinct. Now, Joe Pechmann, professor of biology at 糖心Vlog University, is helping the frogs return to their historical range and populations.
Pechmann has spent his career studying and conserving this species whose population had receded to just one or two ponds. It was while doing research with graduate students that Pechmann realized that the frogs liked habitat with an open canopy and relied on seasonal ponds that formed during the cooler months and dried up in the summer.
The seasonal ponds ensured that larger predators like fish wouldn鈥檛 eat the larva, and the presence of herbaceous vegetation was critical to the frog鈥檚 development. The dusky gopher frogs became critically endangered due to the loss of this type of habitat. Ponds on residential land were often deepened and filled with fish or filled in entirely by property owners, while efforts from the forest service to lessen wildfires allowed trees to fill in the canopy and outcompete the grasses and new growth vegetation that were crucial to dusky gopher frog habitat.
It was during a few warm springs where the vernal ponds dried up early that breeding tadpoles in captivity saved the species. 鈥淲hen the larvae are out in the pond, their survival to metamorphosis is only about 5%, and that's in a good year if the pond doesn't dry early. In a bad year, it's often zero,鈥� Pechmann said.
Joe Pechmann
Breeding the species in captivity allowed the researchers not only to increase the population but pinpoint what environmental factors were best for frog reproduction. This stage of research was vital for conservation efforts. 鈥淭he dusky gopher frog would very likely be extinct if we hadn't raised tadpoles in cattle watering tanks,鈥� Pechmann said. 鈥淥pposed to in the wild, where the frogs are not only battling a loss of habitat but predators and other factors, in captivity the frogs reach maturity at much higher rates, where 80% of the larvae survive to adulthood. We can really give the species a boost.鈥�
The population has rebounded but is not out of the woods yet. Pechmann, along with researchers from the Mississippi Amphibian and Reptile Center, have altered the habitats at several ponds in Mississippi to create more suitable habitat for the frogs.
鈥淐onservation at its heart is a mathematical game,鈥� Pechmann said. 鈥淵ou have to have a population that maintains itself or increases.鈥�
The goal of the project has grown with the number of frogs in the wild. What started as a last-ditch effort to create a self-sustaining population in the wild is now well on track to reach its goal of creating several metapopulations across the state of Mississippi. Metapopulations are collections of smaller, self-sustaining populations that can migrate and reproduce with one another, protecting biodiversity and keeping the species healthy. The frogs have been translocated to fourteen other ponds other than Glen鈥檚 Pond, and now the difficult work of conservation means trying to measure if these populations are self-sustaining.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service hopes that with targeted conservation efforts, the dusky gopher frog can return to its historic range, stretching all the way from southwestern Alabama, across southern Mississippi, to southeastern Louisiana. Pechman recently received a grant from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks to continue these efforts, the first out-of-state grant recipient in 25 years.
Pechmann worries that the dusky gopher frogs aren鈥檛 out of the woods yet. Currently a bill titled the Endangered Species Act Amendment of 2025 is proposing to change the Endangered Species Act. As stated in the Federal Register, the USFWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service are proposing to change the definition of harm鈥� in the Endangered Species Act.
This new definition would not include habitat modification. This could mean that although directly harming or taking endangered species from the wild would still be illegal, alterations made to their habitat would no longer be prohibited under the scope of the bill. This, coupled with funding cuts for the Department of the Interior, under which the US Fish and Wildlife Service sits, makes the work Pechmann is doing all the more important.
