Posted on 08/23/2010 10:50:49 AM PDT by JoeProBono
It may be a shot in the dark, but freezing sperm is one of the last chances to save the hellbender, North America's biggest salamander, conservationists say.
Hellbenders—also known as snot otters and devil dogs—have dwindled throughout their range, which once encompassed streams from northeastern Arkansas to New York.
The 2.5-foot-long (0.7-meter-long) amphibians have declined by 80 to 90 percent in most of their traditional watersheds in recent decades, and healthy populations now haunt only isolated pockets of southern Appalachia (see map) and Pennsylvania, said Dale McGinnity, curator of reptiles at Nashville Zoo.
All of the states in the hellbender's range have protected the species, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing whether to give the hellbender federal protection, McGinnity said.
The reasons for their decline is unknown, but it's likely environmental contaminants such as pesticides are harming the creatures via their highly permeable skin, he said.
To make matters worse, hellbenders don't seem to be breeding much in the wild, he said, possibly because human-made pollutants containing synthetic hormones are damaging the amphibians' reproductive systems. Pollutants may also be harming the species' eggs or larvae.
As a result, there are apparently very few wild hellbenders in existence, leaving mostly aged individuals—the amphibians live at least 30 years and could live much longer.
(See photos of vanishing amphibians in National Geographic magazine.)
The hellbender's decline spurred an international team to collect sperm from some captive salamanders in September 2009 for cryopreservation, a common zoo practice that freezes sperm without damaging its cell membranes.
Though several zoos have put a "great deal of effort" into breeding the amphibians in captivity, none has been particularly successful, McGinnity added. It's unclear why they're tough to breed.
"For the first time, sperm was collected from a living salamander, cryopreserved, and brought back to life," said McGinnity, who is involved in the sperm-preservation effort with colleagues from Belgium's Antwerp Zoo and Michigan State University......
Going to tend dogs, have snack and switch laptops.
Back shortly.
[and I expect not to see blood on the walls or the floor, please]
:)
Frankly, I don’t know WTF you’re talking about. How the hell did you get from coal mining to race baiting? Sounds like you’re still sore from getting spanked in another thread.
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