Healthy, well-maintained gardens invite all kinds of wild guests. Some, like uninvited varmints, can do a lot of damage. Even beautiful, welcome birds can sometimes take a toll on fruits and other garden plants if you’re not careful. But the humble toad is a garden guest that’s always welcome. Leer más.

American cane toads (Rhinella marina), native to Central and South America, are an invasive species in Australia. These toads contain a substance called “bufotoxin” that makes a lot of predators ill, sometimes fatally. (Warning: This is very poisonous stuff. Do not even lick a cane toad!). Leer más.

In the recent paper “Learning to Avoid Dangerous Habitat Types by Aquatic Salamanders, Eurycea tynerensis” Alicia Mathis and Shem Unger,  present evidence of habitat selection based on learning. Aquatic salamanders can be paedomorphic throughout the course of their life and confined to the water. As a result, they often live alongside their predators and the selection pressure to avoid these predators is expected to be high.  The species of focus in this study, the Oklahoma salamander shares the benthic streams with the syntopic predatory fish, the banded sculpin. Leer más.

In 2001, the Mississippi Gopher Frog was listed as an endangered species. It is found in only South Mississippi, primarily around Glen’s Pond in the De Soto National Forest. Leer más.

Santa Cruz, California has become the first city in the U.S. to ban the importation, sale, release, and possession of the American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana). Found throughout Eastern and Central U.S., the frogs have become an invasive threat to wildlife in the western U.S. states and Canada. Leer más.