He's worked in the fields of research biology, where he focused on aquaculture, agricultural biology and herpetology, which is the study of reptiles and amphibians. After this, he spent three years as an environmental consultant working in his home state of Florida. He's authored a book on tortoises in the Mojave Desert and has leveraged his photography to help document and build awareness of the diverse wildlife which fills our parklands
But that's on the growth side of Brave Wilderness. basically wiping out amphibians in Latin America.
Now, we were able to use this remote mapping to find these people and to leave them alone, but to find them and enact protection. are not limited to amphibians-- like I gave the example of the fungi-- the magic mushrooms.
And there were three different groups of scientist trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. and trade in amphibians.
It would be quite reasonable for you not to. It is the study of reptiles and amphibians. Now what do people care more about, dogs or frogs?
And there were three different groups of scientist trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. And there's a massive amphibian die off going on, and we're spreading that fungus around the globe through the commercial, transport,
And so initially, the frogs literally had to be put up at a hotel. This is the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center.
The way I see it, adaptation is really about leaving your comfort zone or being forced from your comfort zone. So if you think about these earliest amphibians dealing with a sea full of predators, they were both forced out of that comfort zone that they were originally in, but they were also drawn out by the opportunity that new niches or new ways of living afforded them.
And if our flowering plants disappeared, that would drastically change energy flow through our terrestrial ecosystems. That the food webs that support our animals-- the amphibians, the reptiles, the birds, the mammals, even our freshwater fishes-- those food buds would collapse and those animals would disappear. The biosphere, the living portion of the Earth, would rot because we would have lost insect decomposers that, right now, rapidly turn
There's no land, basically, in the northern hemisphere, and Africa's over the South Pole. But fish survived, amphibians, reptiles, one of our relatives
And there were three different groups of scientist trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. And in fact, amphibians all around the globe are being affected by this fungus.
Because the golden frog-- and really, all frogs in Panama-- started disappearing in the 1990s. And scientists eventually figured out-- this is sometimes called the amphibian crisis. And it truly is a crisis.
Wherever you look, you find examples of cancer. So we can find cancers in reptiles, in amphibians, in birds, in bats. We can find evidence in dinosaurs.
And so initially, the frogs literally had to be put up at a hotel. For example, at the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center, I met volunteers who had come down from the States.
So right now we're in this narrow margin. Of course you would wanna be born right now. So they're not doing very well because most things like frogs and amphibians and toads need both land and water to survive. So you can't just protect land, you also have to
Most local gun ranges have some kind of beginners shooting seminar. it shuts off the thinking part of our brain and we sort of revert back to dumb amphibians and just sort of trying to do the same thing, expecting
So there are about 30,000 species of fish alive today, which is the same number as all of the other vertebrates put together. So 30,000 fish, but also 30,000 mammals, amphibians, birds, reptiles, all put together. So there's an awful lot of fish.
And there were three different groups of scientist trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. And it paved the way for the growth of all sorts of different plants which brought in insects and small mammals and amphibians which
So anyway, by the time that the mygalomorphs evolved about 240 million years ago-- they evolved before that, but that's the oldest fossil-- there were tall plants. There were climbing and flying insects, and there were also increasing numbers of amphibians and reptiles. And so in some of the oldest surviving branches of the mygalomorphs, we see silk use like this.
So right now we're in this narrow margin. Of course you would wanna be born right now. >Sanjayan: Great question. So how are salamanders and I'd say amphibians and frogs doing?
So that's the sort of weather and climate and environment that these early dinosaurs would have had to face. But also, they were in this battle of survival, in this battle of evolution with other groups that had also survived that terrible extinction at the end of the Permian. And some of those groups were amphibians. The rivers and the lakes of Pangaea were ruled by salamanders, the size of cars, with enormous heads with thousands of teeth. There were crocodiles and their relatives living all across Pangaea, and some of them were meat eaters, some of them were plant
Turn from that to natural creatures, insects, animals of various sorts, reptiles, amphibians.
statistics on the screen, 26% of all mammals, 41% of all amphibians, 30% of
Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates-- leave out all insects, because they're
And they're divided, these chordates, into five classes-- the mammals, the birds, the fish, the reptiles, and the amphibians.
arranged in the five classes-- mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and amphibians.