So now that the second week of classes is over lets really go over what we did this week. As I mentioned before we finally finished presenting our pie chart ins JINS. Since that is finally over we're not moving on to presenting our academic discipline presentations, which are more exciting than they sound. Surprisingly the history majors have more in common with us biology majors than we all thought. More importantly these presentations are showing us that we all have no idea what we want to do with our lives. :D
I also still really like our history class. Latin American history, though really depressing, is really interesting. This week we really got into the independence movements and how the caste system played a huge role in the Latin American countries. The thing I found most interesting was the fact that the richest colonies are now the poorest countries, which made us end yesterday's class on a very depressing note about Haiti...
Moving on to my biology project I spent a lot of time reading about the amphibian decline and the possible causes of it. Overall it's just very depressing reading and makes me very upset. The poor frogs...
Amphibian Decline
For those of you that don't know since the late 1980's there has been a worldwide amphibian decline. There are several reasons for the decline, including climate change, habitat destruction, and an aquatic fungus called chytrid. This fungus uses amphibians as a host, which it usually eventually die from the infection. It goes through and pretty much wipes out almost all the amphibian population since most rely on water sources for reproduction.
From what I've read it takes about 5 years for the population to go from healthy to nearly gone. It is also moving very quickly through Central America. It is not known how many species have been lost...
The area that we're going to had chytrid come through a few years ago, so we're looking to see what the amphibian population looks like now. So pretty much our project is going to be really, really depressing.
On that happy note lets talk about a frog shall we! I've been meaning to start talking about different species of frogs, but haven't had time to start posting them, so here we go!
Panamanian Gold Frog (Atelopus zeteki)
This frog is a national symbol in Panama. Though called a frog, the Gold frog is really a toad, but it is a very frog like toad. It doesn't have rough skin like most toads, but it is considered a "true toad." This species is thought to have been extinct in the wild since 2007, but individuals have been captured for captive breeding. It's official conservation status is critically endangered. (Thank you Wikipedia ;D)
Look how pretty it is!
Sorry about the super long post...
I also still really like our history class. Latin American history, though really depressing, is really interesting. This week we really got into the independence movements and how the caste system played a huge role in the Latin American countries. The thing I found most interesting was the fact that the richest colonies are now the poorest countries, which made us end yesterday's class on a very depressing note about Haiti...
Moving on to my biology project I spent a lot of time reading about the amphibian decline and the possible causes of it. Overall it's just very depressing reading and makes me very upset. The poor frogs...
Amphibian Decline
For those of you that don't know since the late 1980's there has been a worldwide amphibian decline. There are several reasons for the decline, including climate change, habitat destruction, and an aquatic fungus called chytrid. This fungus uses amphibians as a host, which it usually eventually die from the infection. It goes through and pretty much wipes out almost all the amphibian population since most rely on water sources for reproduction.
From what I've read it takes about 5 years for the population to go from healthy to nearly gone. It is also moving very quickly through Central America. It is not known how many species have been lost...
The area that we're going to had chytrid come through a few years ago, so we're looking to see what the amphibian population looks like now. So pretty much our project is going to be really, really depressing.
On that happy note lets talk about a frog shall we! I've been meaning to start talking about different species of frogs, but haven't had time to start posting them, so here we go!
Panamanian Gold Frog (Atelopus zeteki)
This frog is a national symbol in Panama. Though called a frog, the Gold frog is really a toad, but it is a very frog like toad. It doesn't have rough skin like most toads, but it is considered a "true toad." This species is thought to have been extinct in the wild since 2007, but individuals have been captured for captive breeding. It's official conservation status is critically endangered. (Thank you Wikipedia ;D)
Look how pretty it is!
Sorry about the super long post...
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