TOAD WORKSHOP

Don’t miss our Leap Day Lecture!

Why is the Year of the Frog important to Bermuda?

How You Can Help

About Bermuda’s Toads and Frogs

Bermuda’s Toad

Whistling Frogs

Frog Calls

What is the Year of the Frog?

This “Leap” Year of 2008 has been declared the Year of the Frog by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA), the organisation which accredits BAMZ. Joining other zoos, aquariums and conservation groups, BZS hopes to raise awareness about environmental problems affecting frogs and toads around the world, including Bermuda. Scientists say toads and frogs are going extinct along with other amphibians due to factors like habitat destruction, climate change and pollution.

Celebrate the “Leap” Year

Starting on Leap Day (Friday, February 29), BZS will be celebrating all amphibians with a slate of special events, activities, education programmes and research projects over the next few months. Get involved! Frog and toad populations are declining worldwide, and Bermuda is no exception. Learn how you can make a difference. Kids can sign up for special workshops to build their own “Toad Abode,” or visit our upcoming Locals Tails interactive exhibit showcasing the Island’s habitats (opening next month). And everyone can take part on foot or bike in our “Leap Around the Sound” event Saturday, March 8.

Don’t miss our Leap Day Lecture!

Amphibian expert Dr. Jamie Bacon will talk about the Year of the Frog and ways YOU can help Bermuda’s amphibian populations. This evening lecture takes place at BAMZ in the Aquarium Hall, at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Come and learn about what our scientists are discovering about toads and frogs, their state-of-the-art research, and what these animals can tell us about the impact of modern society on human health.

Why is the Year of the Frog important to Bermuda?

• Bermuda wouldn’t be the same if it didn’t have its chorus of whistling frog calls during the warm months. We may only have two or three species of amphibians, but they are important to Bermuda’s culture and ecology.

• The BZS-supported Amphibian Project is an internationally renowned project and is one of the most extensive studies being conducted. It is investigating how environmental pollution is affecting the health and development of Bermuda’s toads (and other species). The research has very significant implications for amphibian populations worldwide that are threatened by pollution.

How You Can Help

There are many ways local residents can help Bermuda’s toads and frogs:

• Use non-toxic pesticide alternatives in your garden and on your lawn. This reduces the risk of poisoning frogs and toads directly (e.g. poisoning areas they inhabit) or indirectly, through poisoning their food.

• Use organic fertilisers

• Provide a flowerpot with moist soil for a toad habitat or use an old broken flowerpot (placed upside down over soil) to create a ‘Toad Abode’

• Teach your children to respect toads and frogs and educate people to not pour salt or bleach on toads

• Do not pour used motor oil or anything toxic on the ground; instead dispose of it properly

• Build a pond in your garden

• Don’t dump anything into our ponds and marshes

About Bermuda’s Toads and Frogs

Due to its isolated location as an oceanic island, there are no native species of amphibians in Bermuda (species that made it here without man’s assistance).

Three species of amphibians were introduced to the island in the late 1800s, one toad species and two whistling frog species.

Bermuda’s Toad

The toad, Bufo marinus, was introduced by Captain Nathaniel Vesey in 1885. He brought 24 toads from British Guiana and released them into a garden in Devonshire to control garden pests.

• The toad has three common names: cane toad, giant toad and marine toad. It is probably best known as the cane toad because of the havoc it is causing in Australia where it goes by that name. It was introduced and is displacing native fauna there.

• Here in Bermuda, by contrast, the toad’s introduction has been a blessing. They are wonderful predators of centipedes and cockroaches, as well as other insect pests and even slugs. Unfortunately, beekeepers don’t like them because toads LOVE bees.

• These toads can grow to be quite large: up to nine inches from tip of snout to stern. The largest one recorded was eight inches in length. However, most adults are between five and six inches long.

• Adult female toads are medium brown in colour with dark blotches on their backs. Adult males are wartier and generally are solid in colour ranging from dark brown to golden in color. Their skin is dry and not slimy (unless they are preparing to shed their skin, which they do every few months).

• Male toads have two types of calls: a chattering ‘release call’ they use when they are trying to get another male away from a female or don’t want to be held, and a deep, booming mating call they use to attract females during the breeding season. The mating call sounds a bit like the sound of a motorcycle in the distance.

• Our toads need to lay their eggs in water and any tadpoles we see on the Island are toad tadpoles. A female can lay between 8,000 to 30,000 eggs. The eggs look like black beads in a transparent jelly-like necklace.

• Depending on the temperature, it takes between three to eight weeks (approximately) for newly-hatched tadpoles to develop into baby toads, or toadlets.

• These toads can secrete a poison that is fatal to dogs and cats when attacked, but toads are passive animals and only defend themselves when they fear for their lives.

• Our toads represent one of the most significant cases of amphibian deformities reported worldwide. Last year 30 percent of the adult toads examined were visibly abnormal in some way. There should be at most five percent with abnormalities.

• Our toads also have a high incidence of abnormalities in their livers and reproductive systems and we have evidence their immune systems are being suppressed as well.

• Our toads are indicating environmental health has declined. Heavy metals and petroleum hydrocarbons appear to be the principal contaminants that are causing the deformities, but pesticides and fertilisers may play a role at some sites.

Whistling Frogs

The common whistling frog (Eleutherodactylus johnstonei) was accidentally introduced, probably in vegetation originating from the Lesser Antilles, in the late 1870s.

• These are the frogs we hear calling ‘gleep gleep’ at night when the temperature is above 67 degrees or so. Only the males call; they are calling to attract females.

• Females lay 20 to 40 eggs in a cluster in damp soil or in moist areas in vegetation or walls. Each egg is only about one mm in diameter.

• The tadpole never leaves the eggs, but metamorphoses into a tiny frog inside the egg. When the egg hatches (more like disintegrates), there sits a tiny fully-formed froglet.

• Adult frogs are between an inch and an inch and a half in length. You can tell a whistling frog from a young toad because whistling frogs have suction discs on the tips of their toes.

• Adults may have a dark chevron or hour glass-shaped marking on their backs.

• As far as we can tell, populations of this whistling frog species are stable.

• We will be collecting data on this species through Project Sound-Off this year.

The second whistling frog (E. gossei) also was apparently accidentally introduced, probably in vegetation from Jamaica between 1890 and 1900.

• The frogs have a distinctive monotonous trill that sounds like ‘tew tew tew tew.’

• Adults are slightly larger and fatter than E. johnstonei. They have black on the side of the head and a reddish patch on the inside of the hind leg.

• They have not been seen since 1994 and may be extinct locally. They will be the subject of ‘The Hunt for E. gossei’ which will be carried out in May this year.