Amphibian
17 amphibian organisms and their business parallels
Alaskan Wood Frog
Alaskan wood frogs push freeze tolerance beyond their southern relatives, surviving temperatures to -18°C (0°F) through enhanced cryoprotectant produc...
Cane Toad
Cane toads are the chapter's primary invasive species example. Australia imported 102 toads from Hawaii in 1935 to control beetles. By 2020, 200 milli...
Fire Salamander
The fire salamander combines the poison dart frog's passive toxicity with active weapon deployment. Its striking yellow-and-black pattern advertises s...
Gray Tree Frog
Gray tree frogs freeze solid during winter like wood frogs but face a different challenge: they overwinter in trees and leaf litter above ground, expo...
Japanese Tree Frog
Japanese tree frogs demonstrate spontaneous synchronization through call alternation. Males alternate their calls with neighbors to avoid overlap - ea...
Mudpuppy
The mudpuppy is North America's largest permanently aquatic salamander, reaching 13 inches while retaining the external gills that other salamanders l...
Olm
The olm is Europe's only cave-adapted vertebrate, spending its entire 100+ year lifespan in complete darkness in cave systems of Slovenia and Croatia....
Poison Dart Frog
Brightly colored frogs of Central and South America whose aposematic (warning) coloration honestly signals toxicity. Their signals are indexical - phy...
Rough-skinned Newt
Produces tetrodotoxin (TTX), one of the most potent neurotoxins known - the same toxin in pufferfish. TTX concentration varies dramatically across pop...
Siberian Salamander
The Siberian salamander survives temperatures to -55°C (-67°F)—the most extreme freeze tolerance of any vertebrate and far exceeding wood frogs. Speci...
Spadefoot Toad
Spadefoot toads survive in deserts where amphibians seem impossible. They spend 8-10 months per year buried underground in estivation, emerging only w...
Spanish Ribbed Newt
The Spanish ribbed newt shares the axolotl's remarkable regeneration—regrowing limbs, tails, hearts, eyes, and even portions of its brain—but unlike t...
Spring Peeper
Spring peepers are tiny frogs—under an inch long—that survive freezing using glycerol rather than the glucose that wood frogs prefer. Both sugars work...
Tiger Salamander
The tiger salamander is the axolotl's closest relative, so similar they can hybridize. But while axolotls are obligately neotenic (never metamorphosin...
Tungara Frog
Male tungara frogs face an excruciating trade-off every breeding season: attract a mate or avoid becoming one. They produce a low-frequency 'whine' at...
Water-Holding Frog
The water-holding frog stores water in its bladder and beneath its skin before burrowing underground for estivation—so much water that Aboriginal Aust...
Wood Frog
Freezes solid in winter with 65% of body water turning to ice, heart stopping, brain activity ceasing - by every medical definition, dead. Survives th...