Biologists track down elusive lungless frog

"Breathing through skin" comes standard!

Don't be too surprised that it must be "breathing through its skin" if it doesn't have lungs --- that comes with being an amphibian (or a reptile, to some extend).

The smaller you are, the simpler your gas-exchange (air, carbondioxide) can be --- hence little insects all breathe through diffusion.

Even large adult bullfrogs breathe 20% of their O2 through the skin (and exhale 75% of their C02 through it). For frog larvae (who have gills) it's usually both around 60-70%. For salamanders like the Hellbender it's 90% and 97%, and for the lungless salamander Ensatina eschscholtzii it's 100% and 100%. [I'm quoting from Kardong (1995) now.]

To increase skin-breathing you can have a large amount of floppy skin like the Hairy frogs have --- even to the extent of living at great depths (with little oxygen) and never surfacing to breathe, like the Titicaca frog Telmatobius culeus does. This frog still has lungs, but ineffectual ones.

Even turtles, lizards and snakes get about 10% of their oxygen through the skin, and exhale around 25% of CO2 by skin (very species-dependent percentages). Also, there are very few species of snake with 2 (functioning) lungs, the left one being reduced to almost nothing.

Heading a little quicker towards extinction...

How on earth does Bickford decide that the frogs are lungless?

Does this involve slicing the poor, endangered beastie open, to spill its guts and secrets for the scientist?

And what reason would someone have to look for a lungless animal?!? "Hmm. That frog looks particularly flat. I wonder if it has lungs?"

Guess I would never have discovered it...

Re: Ru

I think you mean "Dimensionally transmogrified".

Backwards title

It's not 'backwards' evolution unless you know something the frogs don't and they actually require lungs.

As an adaptation to the environment they are in I'd guess that it works perfectly well, so it's the bog standard forward variety of evolution.

There is really no such thing as backwards evolution or devolution. The only time that phrases come out like this are when we mean it's evolving in a direction that for some reason we've decided isn't correct, which invariably means that we are wrong about what is correct for that environment.

That's no frog...

...that's Bill Ray! Of whom (grammar) we're not afraid.

Mine's the t-shirt with 'geeky techie nerd' emblazoned on it.

Sense?

"but we were able to re-discover two new populations upstream"

How can rediscover something that's new?

Just wondering.

What women want

Is a man with an eight inch tongue that can breath through his skin.

Re: re: Greg

"My impression was this was a species that NEVER had lungs"

That would be wrong, I'm afraid.

Unless you define that it would only be "that species" after it lost the lungs, but a different species before. Which would be pointless anyway. But I have the impression that's not what you meant... was it rather that its lineage never had lungs? Wrong.

That frog kinda looks like the alien, specially the eyes...

Surface area...

Being flat does not increase the surface area of the frog!

It increases the surface-area-to-volume ratio! Doh!

@Ferry Boat

"How does it smoke? "

I don't know - I never set fire to one...

...leaving now...

It's still not backwards @Greg

Just because you had something in the past and then evolve to no longer require it (which may have also been the case in the past) does not mean that the evolution is backwards.

Evolution is by definition an ongoing process to cope with the current environmental situation, loosing unnecessary lungs is no more backwards than our loosing tails.

'Frog evolves to more closely resemble distant ancestor' might be more accurate, although longer.

Or just 'Evolution in Borne' to keep in the style used by the author.

Our own loss of the appendix?! @Franklin

I think perhaps you should revise your human anatomy.

Ever heard of appendicitis? Not that rare a human condition, it would be difficult to have this if humans had evolved to no longer have this organ.

Perhaps you are confusing some biology lesson from years ago where it was argued that the appendix no longer performs a critical function in humans and can be safely removed if infected without significant impact on the person.... unless they live on grass.

backward evolution

I think that this was an enjoyable article. I also agree with that maybe 'backward' was not the best word - however it did get the point across. If this particular family of frogs ancestors did infact have lungs then it seems perfectly reasonable that the evolution (which it certainly is) could be described as a devolution. This in the sense as mentioned by others because if something has appeared in the particular line of animal before and then 'dissapears' it is by definition 'devolved'. However in a case when the difference between ancestor and the current family is significant one could ofcourse also choose to call it a revolutionary evolution.... or the shorter version a revolution...

@Creationism

Well I think it is particularly notable if not amusing that the argument from the "creationist" who just joined the debate says that unless we can *prove* something, we can't make a conclusion based on that assumption!

I barely even feel it necessary to finish my retort, as I'm sure you can see it coming. Incredible really that the argument picks a couple of examples from nature to try and lend itself credibility. What of all the other numerous examples that support the hypothesis of evolution?

But anyway there is little point trying to defend evolution from scientific stand point when faced with an attack from someone who proposes completely foundless non-scientific fairy-tales as their counter. See Genesis? I'm glad I still have my sense of humour in tact, as the last time I checked Genesis was a book written by men a couple of thousands of years ago who then passed it down to us via a process akin to Chinese whispers. I'm not sure if I would want to believe anything people believed thousands of years ago, as they were without the benefit of scientific thinking and knowledge... At least they had an excuse for believing that God created the Earth - they had nothing better to choose from. For people nowadays there is no such excuse.

@Danny

Errm - evolution is not random chance. As in 'not'. That is quite well understood by anyone who gives a microsecond's thought to the matter.

As for being a 'religion', I'll let you know when I kneel down and pray for forgiveness to evolution.

Other than that, funny; very funny.

Paris - cos the amount of plastic and rubber must mean she's evolving into a higher life form