Mountain Chicken - critically endangered

The critically endangered Mountain Chicken (Leptodactylus fallax) is also known as the Giant Ditch Frog and the Dominican White-lipped Frog. The Mountain Chicken happens to be one of the world's largest frogs and weighs in at over 2 pounds (700grams) with a length of up to 17 centimetres.

So does the Mountain Chicken live in the mountains?

If you thought yes then you are wrong! The Mountain Chicken inhabits the moist areas of flooded forests, ravines, plantations and dense secondary vegetation from sea level to an altitude of around 400 metres. This frog is nocturnal and hides in burrows during the day.

The Mountain Chicken is named because of its large size and the fact that it was hunted for food.

I decided to write this hub on the Mountain Chicken since the BBC News produced a documentary in March 2009 which was aired recently on New Zealand television.

Where found

The Mountain Chicken is found in the Caribbean Islands of Dominica and Montserrat but also once survived on Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Description

The Mountain Chicken has a brownish back, orangey coloured laterals with a pale yellow undercarriage and sports continuous dorso-lateral folds from its eye to its groin.

The Mountain Chicken lives for up to 12 years and matures at three years of age.

Breeding

The Mountain Chicken maybe a frog but not in the usual sense. It digs a nest that is around 50cms deep and with the help of the male Mountain Chicken, creates a frothy foam at the base of the nest so it can then lay eggs into the foam. The nest is time-consuming and is completed in 9 to 14 hours.

A film covers the nest which is guarded by both parents. Between 26 and 43 tadpoles hatch and are fed by the mother by laying infertile eggs so the tadpoles can gorge themselves. The foam is regularly replaced by the devoted amphibian parents. The tadpoles take about 45 days for metamorphosis and leave the nest at the onset of the wet season.

Food

The Mountain Chicken is a gluttonous amphibian that enjoys swallowing whole insects, small mammals, crickets, millipedes, crustaceans, snakes and other smaller frogs.

This status was listed by IUCN in 2004. Humans are responsible for the Mountain Chickens decline through their heavy exploitation (hunting) for food locally and for tourism. There are figures of 8,000 to 36,000 frogs that were harvested annually. Mountain chickens were easy to hunt because they sat out in the open and were vocally loud.

The West Indians enjoyed the Mountain Chickens meaty legs so much that it became a Dominican national dish, not to mention that the Mountain Chicken was also in the Dominican Coat of Arms.

Habitat loss from human destruction, volcanic eruptions (Soufriere Hills volcano in Montserrat erupted in February 2010), deforestation, climate change and pollution are also to blame along with a small amount of predation from the likes of mongoose, cats, dogs and pigs.

I suppose this sounds like the usual issues facing the average amphibian.....but wait...it gets worse.....thanks to humans!

Over the last decade, the Mountain Chicken population has declined by a massive 80%.

Scientists discovered a highly infectious fungal disease that has killed amphibians in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean and Australasia. Amphibians throughout the world have declined dramatically in the last few decades and its all due to this fungal disease.

In 1998 the Chytrid fungal superbug (Bactrachochytrium dendrobatidis) was discovered to be the cause of the fungal disease, infecting the skin of amphibians by coating them and suffocating them. The fungus itself is unfortunately common in the soil ecosystem where the infected amphibians live.

The fungal disease is Chytridiomycosis. Within 15 months of this disease arriving in Montserrat on small frogs imported in banana leaves the disease spread along the river systems to the Mountain Chicken. The Chytrid superbug takes up to two weeks to kill by suffocating the Mountain Chicken by growing all over its skin.

Scientists have labelled the current crisis the 'sixth mass extinction to affect life on Earth, and for good reason. Mass deforestation is changing the weather patterns with some areas becoming drier and others wetter. Amphibians like the Mountain Chicken rely on moist environments and will suffer and cease to exist in a dry environment.

Critically endangered and endangered amphibians in all the IUCN Red List groups have increased.In Haiti alone, there is a whopping 92% of amphibians in danger of extinction.

Chytridiomycosis is responsible for the loss of around 40% of amphibians in Central America and species like the Panama Poison Dart Frog (Colostethus panamensis) is threatened.

The Mountain Harlequin Toad (Atelopus certus) found in Panama and Costa Rica, has also been devastated by the Chytrid fungus. In June 2010 the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project rescued frogs from the Darien National Park world heritage site to breed and save the species in a captive breeding programme.

Lets go back to the 1970's.

EUREKA!

This was the beginning of the decline in the numbers of amphibians world wide. This was the decade when the amphibian trade began.

Some species such as the American Bullfrog can co-exist with the fungal superbug but when these frogs were introduced to an uninfected species the fungal disease ran riot and mass amphibian extinctions began.

In July 1999, the Durrell Wildlife Trust airlifted six male and three female Mountain Chicken frogs to Jersey Zoo where they were involved in a captive breeding study in June 2000.

Nests were fashioned out of a clay in large bowls with lids on for the Mountain Chicken. Eggs were laid in the foam, then hatched and then the most remarkable filming took place. When a lid was lifted off a female she was in the process of laying infertile eggs and feeding her tadpoles. This was the first ever filming of the unique Mountain Chicken.

There are captive populations of the Mountain Chicken in St Louis zoo and some other zoos so if the Mountain Chicken is added to the extinction list there will still be the captive populations.

It was discovered that fungus on infected frogs could be eradicated by using a fungicide but there was no cure for infected Mountain Chickens in the wild.

In New Zealand researchers tested two frog species from Austraila; one being the Brown Tree Frog (Litoria ewingii) and the other - the Southern Bell Frog (L. raniformis). It was found that the fungus was killed when an infected frog was placed in a solution of chloramphenicol.

There is a small drawback due to the fact that chloramphenicol is banned in Europe and the USA as it causes apiastic anaemia in humans.

There are several strains of the fungal disease that has been isolated. Researchers are trying out different fungicides on infected frogs world wide, but waiting for any possible side effects will take time. So there is a cure but it has a risky side effect in humans. Ironic considering humans were the cause in the first place.