Today was the first of the 6 days we had to find our allotted 6.6 Atelopus varius....and it wasn't an encouraging day. First we headed to Cerro Juan Julio and hiked some streams in which Samwell has found many golden frogs in the past, and we didn't find a single golden frog. In fact, we only found a couple frogs period. A Bufo hematiticus, a Bufo granulosus, and a couple Dendrobates auratus. The D. auratus showed signs of the chytrid disease....sloughing gray skin around the drinking patch. We took a few skin swabs of seemingly infected animals to analyze later. Typically we would find Colostethus here as well, but not today. It worries me that the forest dwellers are showing signs of infection.....does that mean that the animals that were living near the streams are already gone? The silence of the forest became increasingly deafening as the day went on. Late afternoon we returned to camp, disinfected ourselves (so we didn't become vectors for the fungus) and then headed to Rio Marta to see what, if anything, we could find there.

Rio Marta proved to be better than Cerro Juan Julio. We found 4 juveniles (way too young to sex). The animals seemed to be about 2 weeks old, based on size. Those four frogs were the only amphibians we found there. I wonder what this means......I know that the chytrid only effects a tadpole's mouthparts, so if the tadpoles were infected at the time in which they were no longer grazing on diatoms, but instead are absorbing their tails......that would explain why they are not showing signs yet. Essentially, they were reinfected as metamorphs, and since it is a slow growing fungus......we still found these baby frogs. Generally it takes 3-4 weeks before symptoms of the disease are shown.

At least we have potentially saved these. Tonight we began itraconozol treatments on the babies. A question is tugging on my heart right now.....legally....can we import these juveniles since we cannot sex them? How does that affect our permits? I just hope that we do find adult frogs to satisfy the permit. But what happens to these babies then?

These are the questions that run through my head all night....and it is soooooo quiet...to quiet to sleep....