Nov 1 04

Hi,

My name is Mike Treglia. I'm a freshman Natural Resources major at Cornell. A good friend of mine got me into poison dart frogs a few years ago, and since then I have bred them at the Staten Island Zoo and kept some tincs and auratus on my own. Aside from frogs, I've had lots of experience with pond turtles- I spent a summer with the American Museum of Natural History doing a population study in upstate NY and in Central Park- dealing mostly with snappers, painteds, and red-eared sliders. My main long-term interest is in the ecology of herps, and looking at both natural interactions and how different management practices affect them and their environment.

I've been on frognet for a couple of years now, and have posted occasionally but rarely- I usually lurk unless something catches my eye.

Well- now onto the steak or veggies issue. About a year ago I did a bit of a study on the affect of diet on tadpoles growth and development rates. Auratus and Tinctorius were used for this and 3 diets were tested- herbivorous (spirulina algae), carnivorous (frozen bloodworms), and omnivorous (a mixture of the 2). Here are the basic results:

A) the different diets had no affect on the time till metamorphosis in both species

B) there was no strong correlation between mortality rate and diet- all tincs survived through metamorphosis; 1 herbivorous auratus died, 2 omnivorous auratus died, and all carnivorous survived

C) there was no spindly leg in tinctorius tadpoles; for the auratus 3 herbivorous had spindly leg, 1 omnivorous, and 1 carnivorous both had spindly leg. I speculated that this may have been due to a lack of protein and essential amino acids in the herbivorous diet, as from what i've read that is a contributing factor

D) for the tinctorius, the diet didn't affect change in size from hatch to morph, but in the auratus the carnivorous grew significantly less than both the herbivorous and omnivorous tadpoles.

I would've liked to study the effects of the tadpole diets on the adult frogs, but it was simply not feasible for me to do so- you'd probably come up with some interesting facts there though.

I just thought that you all might like to hear about that (even though the results weren't very conclusive).

From the research I did before the project, I found tadpoles tend to eat both detritus and algae in the wild, and so common sense tells me that an omnivorous diet is best in general, but the ideal varies from species to species.

Also, I must acknowledge the frog-netters who helped me in the project. Matt Mirabello offered more help than I could have asked for in setting up the experiment, photographing the tadpoles while I was away and offering tons of advice, and Ed Kowalski gave me a great deal of information to work with. Thank you both!

Thanks,
Mike Treglia


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