Research Facilities
Our túngara colony was established by Christina Gridi-Papp 4 years ago. We are currently maintaining over 200 frogs in 20 different aquaria. We use sterile sphagnum moss for moisture. For breeding populations we provide a water reservoir for egg laying. Frogs are fed every other day alternating food sources between pinhead crickets and wingless drosophila. We keep the frogs in a perpetual mating season, providing them with an abundance of water to mimic the natural rainy season. The light cycle is set to provide 14 hours of daylight conditions and 10 hours of night. In order to keep records on brood heritage, we isolate male/female couples in 1 gallon aquaria and provide mating conditions. The resulting offspring are separated into their own aquarium and labeled, allowing us to keep track of brood lineage. The froglets that are not used in specific experiments or bred are kept in a pseudo-terrarium holding pen where they mature to adulthood.
The room is equipped with an overhead flow through water and air supply system that allows us to easily maintain up to 90 tanks at a time. It not only houses our captive population of Northern Swordtails, but also is home to Amazon mollies, leopard frogs, bull frogs and other miscellaneous fish. The room is kept at a constant temperature and cycles through a 13 hour dark period and 11 hour light period. While in the fish room, the fish are fed Tetramin flakes and tanks are filled water treated with Prime and love.
Located 15 minutes from UT main campus,
Brackenridge Field lab is owned by the University of Texas, and serves as a
field lab for UT researchers.
The Ryan lab maintains populations of Swordtails and Amazon Mollies for
various behavior experiments. These populations are kept with little to no
maintenance in multiple cattle trough tanks located at BFL. Spring water is
provided using a flow through system. Aquatic vegetation is used to provide
shade, attract food sources and create a natural environment for the fish
and other invertebrates. And during colder months, cattle trough heaters are
used to keep water temperatures up. There are also smaller in ground tanks
that can be utilized for specific experiments.
The Ryan lab has been doing research on túngara frog behavior at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Gamboa, Panama since 1987. Gamboa is a small town located in Central Panama on the banks of the Panama Canal. It is surrounded by national park with a rich tropical fauna and flora. Pipeline Road crosses the Park and provides access to the forest and a series of small streams. In Gamboa there are furnished apartments with internet connections for rent to visiting researchers. Under the apartments are several laboratories and common rooms including a small frog lab with a semi-anechoic chamber fitted to do phonotaxis experiments. In a nearby room is a set of 8 sound isolation chambers fitted for playing calls to individual males and recording their evoked responses. Several concrete ponds have just been completed on the recently acquired STRI Santa Cruz site at the edge of the forest in Gamboa. They will allow observation and experimentation of túngara (and other frogs) breeding in the field.
Click here to see the 2004 Panama Collage!!
