International Research Fellow Awards Program: Conservation Genetics of Tropical Frogs

Crawford, Andrew J, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

0076196 Crawford The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide Dr. Andrew J. Crawford with twenty-four months of support to work with Dr. Federico V. Bolanos at the Universidad de Costa Rica and Dr. Eldredge Bermingham at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. This project involves conservation genetics of tropical frogs, important in understanding this decade's global decline in frog populations and species. The goal of this research is to estimate the spatial scale and temporal rate at which the processes of genetic erosion and faunal collapse affect fragmented populations of Neotropical frogs. It will answer the following questions: 1) How far may habitat fragments be reduced and isolated before the following are affected: a) frog abundance, b) frog diversity, c) phenotypic variation, and d) genetic variation within populations? 2) How quickly do the above variables decline over time? The PIs will use DNA "fingerprinting" and DNA sequencing to resolve evolutionary histories of populations. This will provide an analysis of the long-term survival prospects of a tropical frog fauna. Dr. Bolanos is an authority on the current status of amphibians in Costa Rica and has been monitoring populations for over a decade. Dr. Bermingham is a specialist in genetic studies of tropical vertebrates.