Big deal, you say?

Madagascar is the only place where the tomato frog can be found in the wild and its tropical rain forest habitat is slowly disappearing. Poachers, meanwhile, are stalking the tomato frog, which is now on the endangered species list.

If deforestation and poaching continue, zoos and aquariums could one day be the only place to find the tomato frog. Breeding the frog without hormones increases the likelohood of being able to continue the species existance in captivity.

"What it means is , we're getting a better understanding of what the animal really needs for its reproductive cycle," said Dr. Dale Denardo, an endrocrinologist at University of California at Berkeley and expert on tomato frogs and other amphibians.

The tomato frog has been bred in captivity before, but only by using hormones to stimulate reproductive glands.

The Baltimore Zoo was able to get the frogs to mate naturally by creating an envirtoment close to their natural home and slowly changing conditions to momic the approach of the mating season in Madagascar.

"We really did our homework with this and I think it paid off," said Wisnieski, the zoo's curator for amphibians.

Named for their bright orange color, the tomato frogs(Dyscophus antongilli) can grow to the size of a plump red tomato when they are fed a steady diet of newborn rodents and insects.

"They're beautiful, but they're getting harder and harder to find," Wisnieski said.

In order to persuade the frogs to mate, zoo personel first decreased the depth of the water pools. That was followed by reproducing humidity, temperature, light and water depth, as happens in Madagascar.

"They just responded beautifully," Wisnieski said.

Zoo curators hope the frog breeding experiement will also highlight the need to save the frogs rainforest home.


Page 15, The Daily Times