Discover the remarkable adaptation of the Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles, who have found a unique way to avoid contaminating their limited water supply – by simply not pooping during their early developmental stages.
Conserving Precious Resources
Quickly occurring at sea level, one example is the Eiffinger’s tree frog (aka Iriomote or Ishigaki treefrog; Rhacophorus eiffingeri), which lives on two Japanese isles, poses rare dilemma in its breeding grounds. These tiny, very small frogs breed in marginal microhabitats like tree holes or bamboo stumps– they give breeding sites that are secure yet of restricted area.
Whereas in bigger bodies of water the faeces of other frog species that went astray could just be diluted and neutralised, the space next to Eiffinger’s tree frogs’ nests being very limited has not permit this. The tadpoles, by pooping too much, would raise the toxicity of ammonia beyond what they could survive. To this end, the Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles have evolved an incredible strategy — they just don’t poop at all for some months during their early development.
INNOVATIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE
We find out steps 67 and 68 in this long road to the sanitation strategy with a team of researchers from Nagoya University in Japan. Instead of excreting the waste into their environment, they sequester it in their bodies as ammonia, removing nitrogen from its original form until when they reach the subadult stage and can expel it at a non-toxic stage.
This behavior is similar to that of bee and ant larvae, which do not defecate in order to keep their nests tidy. This reduced the amount of ammonia released in the confined water bodies offering Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles a cleaner and safer environment to be raised, eventually leading to a higher survivorship.
The researchers then performed a series of experiments to test how well Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles can tolerate ammonia, compared with Japanese tree frog tadpoles and other frog species. But the Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles were able to tolerate substantially more ammonia, a trait that indicates increased resistance to this toxin. This combination of adaptations—reducing ammonia release and becoming tolerant to it in the environment—enables them to outcompete with other organisms living their special niches
Conclusion
The unique adaptation of the Eiffinger’s tree frog tadpoles to withhold regular defecation for a considerable time in their early lifecycle stages, keeping their limited water resources as clean as possible, highlights how organisms have evolved unusual strategies to cope with peculiar living environments. The find, say the scientists involved, underscores the nuanced and largely unseen diversity of microhabitats that contribute to biodiversity and imperil these fragile ecosystems.
