Spring is just around the corner..

What's going on in the world and works of the Frog Ladies? Much much many things.
I've been hearing from folks that they've read the frog blog and visited my website, which shamed me into posting, and recommitting (again!) to posting more often. Here we go:

Spotted frog with radio-transmitter.

Firstly, I'm doing my Masters thesis at UBC (started in Sept 2010). I'm focused on amphibian habitat, of course, and my thesis is looking at the different habitats selected by Oregon spotted frogs and invasive bullfrogs in a habitat in which they (used to) coexist. We've been collecting data on frog movements, habitat, and frog health since June 2011, and the field season is slowly coming to a close. My field crew have been fantastic, and continuously cheerful despite the winter weather conditions.

Keith and Kendra chasing frogs in the Aldergrove study site.

As the field season winds down, data analysis begins. Thankfully Kendra, my trusty field tech and database guru, has taken on the enormous task of data entry. For me, winter has been a time of reading, report-writing, and preparing for upcoming work. Right now, I'm getting familiar with the data, formatting, doing simple computations, and preparing it for serious analysis. Next step, becoming friendly with the stats processing programs and software.


As usual for this time of year, we're gearing up for field surveys in March. This involves preparing permits, field materials, training materials, etc, and pulling together the crew for this year's surveys. I'm delighted to have a very large group of folks training this year - soon we'll have an army of surveyors able to seek out and identify spotted frogs across its historic range. Perhaps we'll find a new population!

Red-legged frogs in amplexus.

Yesterday Andrea found some spotties in amplexus (getting ready to breed) in the captive population at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.  Hopefully they don't start too soon. Eggs that are laid before a late freeze die.. so we're hoping for a later breeding season and high survival.