Certain animals will feel climate change earlier than others.
Vincent Farallo, assistant professor at the University of Scranton, looks into one of these species.
Vincent Farallo Ph.D. is from Buffalo, NY where he grew up developing an interest in reptiles and amphibians. He received his B.Sc. from John Carroll University in 2006, followed by a M.Sc. from Texas State University- San Marcos in 2010. Dr. Farallo then completed his Ph.D. at Ohio University in 2017 studying how climate change impacts the habitat use of salamanders. He went on to a post-doctoral position at Virginia Tech and Yale University where he began studying how the physiology of organisms can influence how they are impacted by climate change. Starting in 2020 Vincent started as an Assistant Professor at The University of Scranton. He teaches courses focused on anatomy and physiology and is studying how amphibian physiology and ecology are influenced by changing climates.
How Does Becoming Poisonous Impact A Frog’s Physiology
What is the impact of changing habitats on dart poison frogs, which populate wild areas of Central and South America? These frogs are like the “canaries in the coal mine,” as their physiology is more sensitive to the impact of climate change, as are most of their amphibian brethren.
The dart frogs are not poisonous when they come into my lab because we feed them fruit flies instead of mites and ants found in their native habitat. Frogs in the wild sequester the alkaloids from these mites and ants to give them a chemical defense against predators. We are able to give some of the poison to the frogs by dusting their fruit flies with one of these defensive chemicals which the frogs then consume.
Changing temperatures in their habitat directly impact the body temperature of these brightly colored frogs. As temperatures increase, so does metabolic rate, which will require frogs to eat for more energy, or seek different habitats.
We are studying several metabolic functions, such as respiration, in 10 species of these frogs. We want to see if changing temperatures have an effect on alkaloid sequestration. Our hypothesis is that the sequestration of defensive chemicals will increase the frog’s metabolism and alter their natural behaviors.
One of the ways we are doing this is by providing the frogs with an alkaloid-supplemented diet and quantifying metabolic rate by measuring and comparing rates of carbon dioxide production and oxygen consumption. These frogs naturally possess more than 20 different types of alkaloids, and therefore a diversity of alkaloids and their effects on physiology will be measured.
Our hope is that our study results will help measure the impact of climate change and other environmental forces on the frog’s physiology.
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