A few months ago I was delighted, while cleaning out the clay pots that had hosted a mini-garden of begonias throughout the summer, to prepare them for storage, to suddenly come across the spectacle of a tiny tree frog sitting on the lip of one of the pots.  Our son, a biologist, visiting with us at the time, gently lifted it off the pot and deposited it in a moist earthy place in front of the porch, well hidden by shrubs, with the hope the tiny creature would find winter haven there.

Amphibian species are in decline, and have been for years.  There are concerns that some mysterious force is leading them to mass extinction.  Scientists in many parts of the world are working to find the reason they are threatened and to somehow mitigate the threat from whatever its source.  The source may be the liberal use of artificial chemical fertilizers spread on farm fields washing eventually down into water sources, imperilling the existence of these creatures.  Each time a species is threatened or endangered it poses a risk to the overall ecosystem, since nature has designed everything she has created to be interrelated; what threatens one will eventually pose a threat to others.

 A Canadian biologist has designed a hormone mixture used successfully to breed frogs in captivity.  His protocol tricks the animals' pituitary gland to release an ovulation hormone common to all vertebrates.  He has helped the Nashville zoo to breed Eastern hellbenders, a species of salamanders cousin to Japanese and Chinese giant salamanders with a direct descent from the time dinosaurs were on Earth 65 million years ago.  The scientist, University of Ottawa biology professor Vance Trudeau, is also working with the Smithsonian in an effort to induce male Panamanian giant toads to release sperm to be frozen and used in vitro fertilization. 

And here's one way in which science discovers ways in which the study of the evolution of and the qualities endemic to certain species may be of potential benefit to humankind, quite aside from their value in the overall preservation need of all existing life on Earth.  A Mexican salamander, familiarly called a 'water monster', more scientifically known as an axolotl, has the amazing capacity to regenerate limbs.  The creature is also immune to cancer.  And the scientific community studying these qualities may yet discover some of nature's survival secrets that may be of benefit in the future to humanity.

Salk research shows that in the axolotl, a Mexican salamander, jumping genes have to be shackled or they might move around in the genomes of cells in the tissue destined to become a new limb, and disrupt the process of regeneration.
Image: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Isn't ours a wonderful world of biological diversity, one well worth being concerned about and involved in preserving...?