Hi!

[tylototriton]

Not at the moment. I'm currently at college so I can only live vicariously through others in the hobby. I've had cranwelli and still have some bombina at home. Other than that i've kept several species of bufo. By far my favorite is Leptodactylus pentadactylus, which are now just starting to be seen in the hobby. To sum it up, i've kept a lot, but am taking a sabbatical right now. I'll be heading to Costa Rica again next spring (hopefully) where i've previously found Leptodactylus and Bufo marinus. So i'll share as much information as I can from my experiences, and I look forward to hearing about others.

Alex

[Abrahm]

I'll be heading to Costa Rica again next spring (hopefully) where i've previously found Leptodactylus and Bufo marinus. So i'll share as much information as I can from my experiences, and I look forward to hearing about others.

Any chance that you can share some of your experiences in Costa Rica herping in a blog or this thread? I'd love to hear about some neotropical herping experiences by members of the community.

[tylototriton]

I would love to. My senior year of high school I applied for and was accepted into the Forman School Rainforest Project. The project has been around for about 15 years and each year brings a group of high school students down to Costa Rica to conduct various field studies. The goal of the project is to find sustainable and environmentally friendly wage making enterprises for the local populations. We also try to catalog the species and monitor their populations as a way of monitoring ecosystem health. I was a member of the Reptiles and Amphibians Project which, in addition to cataloging species, focused on studying the progression of Batrachochytridium dendrobatidis fungus throughout the preserve. This actually comprised the majority of our research. We look for the presence of fungus in all stages of development, from egg to full grown frog in numerous species and track its progression. All in all we spent 12 days there last year, and I will hopefully be going down again in March to continue this research as well as start some new projects. Thats the shortest summary I can give. I would be more than happy to answer any questions based on my limited experience and if I can't answer it I know some people who can.

Alex