The Effects of Hibernation on the Proportions of a Ranidae species

Nowicki418

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Developing and performing an experiment on the brumation of frogs.

I am not going to go into the details or this post would be rather long. ( It already is large ) Basically this involves putting a group of amphibians throught brumation. The individuals are weighed and measured, creating an average representing all the individuals in a given tank. Amount of food each tank recieves is also noted. The basic setup is mostly planned out. ( Knowing that frogs vs. tadpoles will have some different requirnments )

As of now the question is whether to use tadpoles or adults.

Tadpole data: Wieght, SVL, L, and Tail width are measured/compared and if/when the tadpoles transform into sub-adults.

Adult data: Wieght, similar measurnments on body proportions

Personally I am in favor of tadpoles right now as the tanks will be easier to maintain. ( No Insect Keepers! ) Tadpoles are also acustomed to sharing space with other tadpoles, so each tank could hold more tadpoles than it could adult frogs. Tadpoles are also growing ( or I should say changing ) at a faster rate than adults. Data may be better reflected in a group that is changing at a quicker pace.

However, tadpoles also tend to be more delicate than frogs so they may have additional casualties. Although there would be less individual frogs than tadpoles, data from frogs may proove to be more reliable. The other issue is the time constraint; this must be completed around Febuary/May which may not be enough time for the tadpoles to undergo metamorphosis. Frog data may not take as long to gather.

Any opinions or helpful information would be wonderful. Also a reminder that I have more written out and more information than stated in this post. I can add details as things are brought up.
 
Well it’s going to be frogs. What do you guys think of the idea of taking blood samples during this thing in addition to mass and external measurements? To see if the erythrocytes and/or leucocytes change appearance or concentration. I think the rate in which blood cells are produced will change during hibernation; maybe more production to increase the efficiency of respiration through cutaneous membranes or less production to reflect the slowing metabolism. Anyway, for someone to do something like this they really need to know what they are doing and caudata is one of my resources. So.... any thoughts.
 
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