Koch Foundation

Draper





  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Forestry managers face what seems like an unavoidable tradeoff. Controlled burns in Western forests reduce the risk of wildfire but release carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change. But a team of ecologists recently showed that controlled burns can actually benefit the climate in the long term.</p><p>Since the 1960s, attempts to suppress natural low-intensity fires led to forests overgrown with small trees and loaded with dead leaves. These act as fuels that easily accelerate a small fire into a forest-clearing inferno, though burning some fuel when winds are low and humidity is high—making a wildfire unlikely—can help prevent future disasters.</p><p>In 2012, calculations suggested that restoring low-intensity fire would release more carbon than not burning. However, new computer simulations of wildfire behavior over several decades showed that prescribed burns and vegetation thinning can both reduce the risk of wildfire and trap more carbon in tree growth than an untreated forest.</p><p>“When we’re actually doing treatments in the forest, you can’t just light a fire under what would generate wildfire conditions and see how your treatments burn,” said Matthew Hurteau, a University of New Mexico forestry professor and lead author of a forthcoming study in the journal Ecological Applications. “The modeling is really important because then we can look at a range of conditions under which a fire might occur and see how that interacts with the forest structure.”</p><p>After surveying a northern Arizona ponderosa pine forest, Hurteau’s group modeled how the forest responded to high and low probabilities of stand-replacing wildfire, the most intense and damaging kind. They ran many simulations with randomized wildfire behavior to get a range of results for different fire prevention treatments.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>The simulations showed that when wildfire is added to the system, even the most invasive treatment, thinning and burning, trapped more carbon than it lost—after 40 years for a high probability of wildfire, and after 51 years for low probability of wildfire.</p><p>John Campbell, an Oregon State University forestry professor, remains skeptical that the simulations definitively show that thinning and burning has a positive effect on the atmosphere.</p><p>“I don’t think there are any studies…that are going to suggest that an actively thinned and prescribed-burn forest actually in the long term maintains higher carbon than one that isn’t,” Campbell said. However, he does not deny the treatments reduce the risk of intense wildfires.</p><p>Malcolm North, a Forest Service research scientist who co-wrote the study with Hurteau, said that how a controlled burn affects the climate depends on the region. In the Pacific Northwest, where forests receive lots of moisture and fires are easier to suppress, a treated forest would not trap as much carbon, North said.</p><p>“I think that Campbell’s argument is actually a very good argument in systems that are pretty productive and also where fire suppression really does tamp down the fire,” North said. “But if you go to a drier system that’s not so productive… you get a benefit” from controlled burns. In Southwestern forests, where wildfires are hard to prevent, reducing the amount of fuel through controlled burns creates forests better at both trapping carbon and resisting wildfire, he said.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>But even in wetter climates, controlled burns help forests by killing small trees, North said. Forests packed with young trees have greater competition for moisture, making all of the trees more vulnerable to drought. “If you don’t treat the forest, you can sometimes lose the very old-growth trees that you want to hold on to—the trees that hold the most carbon,” he said.</p><p>By opening gaps in the canopy, controlled fires restore variety to the forest’s structure, making it more resilient to climate change, said Morgan Wiechmann, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and collaborator with North and Hurteau.</p><p>“When you put in place this prescribed fire, you’re restoring some of those ecological benefits that naturally occurring fires used to give,” Wiechmann said.</p><p>North said forest managers need to use fire as a tool more often. “We’re fighting a battle and we’re tying one of our arms behind our back, and frankly that arm has the Popeye muscles on it,” North said. “We need to work with the fire, and let the fire help us do some of the fuels reduction.”</p></div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/3021735300/">Rennett Stowe / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)</a></p></div>
  



<p>In Western forests prone to wildfire, thinning and burning treatments can help reduce wildfire risks and trap carbon in new plant growth.</p>

Controlled fires could actually save forests and fight climate change





  
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<p>
  When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was arrested in Texas for bringing the clock he made to school to show his teacher, he encountered just one of the many ways that students can suffer from stereotypes, especially in science and technology. Ethnic minorities and women often experience this pressure because they do not match expectations for what scientists looks like. But a new psychology experiment shows how stereotyped students can use that pressure to their advantage.
 </p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="brazil-standardized-test" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/brazil-standardized-test.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  High school students in Brazil take a national standardized test.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            

<p>
  Deeply ingrained stereotypes like “girls can’t do math” tend to make people underperform. It’s an effect known as stereotype threat, which arises when people fear that they’ll confirm a negative stereotype about their group. Negative stereotypes about testing can lead to lower scores on standardized tests like the SAT and GRE, harming students’ chances of getting into top schools. Yet that stereotype threat can motivate students to score higher than their socially privileged peers, according to
  <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000761">
   a study
  </a>
  coming out this November in the
  <em>
   Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
  </em>
  by psychology professors Allison Seitchik of Merrimack University and Stephen Harkins of Northeastern University.
 </p>
<p>
  “When they’re threatened, they can do better—as long as they know what to do,” Seitchik said.
 </p>
<p>
  The researchers handed women college students a 120-problem math test. For some students, the instructions read that the test “has been shown to produce gender differences.” Reading this was intended to induce stereotype threat. And indeed, when students were threatened, they solved 12 problems less on average than non-threatened students.
 </p>
<p>
  But when students were threatened and also told to use a more efficient problem solving method, they not only did as well, they correctly answered 13 more problems than non-threatened students also told to use the better method—reversing stereotype threat’s usual effect.
 </p>
<p>
  “I thought it was pretty cool that [we]were finding the opposite of what people had found with stereotype threat,” Seitchik said. “If you just tweak their approach…you eliminate the stereotype threat effect.”
 </p>
<p>
  Seitchik used the same experimental design as other studies of stereotype threat, but took things a step further to look at specific problem solving strategies.
 </p>
<p>
  While psychologists have documented the stereotype threat’s effects, they still disagree on the mental process that causes it. Some argue that worries about confirming a negative stereotype take up short-term memory space which could be used for problem solving. This is called the working memory explanation.
 </p>
<p>
  Other psychologists claim that, first and foremost, stereotyped students want to beat expectations, and that it’s this extra effort which traps them. This is known as the mere effort explanation. Giving the test their all, stereotyped students tend to choose problem solving strategies they trust most instead of the most efficient ones. Students then try to solve the whole problem on math tests instead of using logic to eliminate wrong answers—ultimately slowing them down.
 </p>
<p>
  “In this study, the authors beautifully identified a situation” where the mere effort model explains stereotype threat, said University of Waterloo psychology professor Christine Logel, who co-wrote
  <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-073115-103235">
   a recent review
  </a>
  of stereotype threat studies. But in other situations in which stereotypes are in play, the way stereotype threat works could depend on many other factors, she said.
 </p>
<p>
  Seitchik’s experiment showed a way to make tests better reflect the students’ true abilities. Instructing students on the best test-taking methods—for example, using logic to eliminate answers—lets them put their extra effort to its best use.
 </p>
<p>
  “If we can do this with females that are younger…then we can keep them in STEM,” Seitchik said.
 </p>
<p>
  But these findings are not just relevant for gender stereotypes. It works the same for students of any gender facing negative ethnic stereotypes about academic performance. For any stereotyped group, if researchers find the problem-solving method students use when trying their hardest, a simple instruction to use a different one can raise scores, Seitchik said.
 </p>
<p>
  Another way to make tests more accurate assessments of ability is to stop asking questions about gender and ethnicity before standardized exams, Seitchik said. Though this would not eliminate stereotype threat, it could lessen it.
 </p>
<p>
  “Don’t ask students’ race and gender in the front page of the test,” Logel said. “It’s like flashing a neon sign that says, ‘Race is a factor on this test. Gender is a factor.’ ”
 </p>
</section>
</div>
  



Psychologists Discover Easy Ways to Make Standardized Testing Less Biased





  
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 <p>
  Dead men tell no tales—but it turns out Caribbean shipwrecks can tell us about the climate in the days of yore.
 </p>
 <p>
  Scientists studying how climate change influences hurricanes have been faced with a problem: the U.S. only started keeping track of the storms in 1851. To figure out hurricane patterns of the deeper past, researchers needed a different record.
 </p>
 <p>
  During the Age of Sail, hurricanes were the primary cause for shipwrecks in reports from that time. The researchers looked at records of Spanish ships in the Caribbean Sea from 1495-1825, and the list of shipwrecks told a riveting tale. While dozens of vessels sunk each year in stormy periods, 1645-1715 was a better time for the Spanish fleet, with only a few ships sinking each year.
 </p>
 
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Bountysinking" class="richtext-image full-width" height="360" width="640"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/bountysinking.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  A replica of the HMS Bounty sunk in 2012 after its captain sailed it into the path of Hurricane Sandy.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            
 <p>
  It turns out that this period was one of global cooling, often called the Maunder Minimum or “Little Ice Age.” During this time, the sun’s light dimmed, cooling the planet and leading to more El Niño events that keep the Atlantic from producing large storms.
 </p>
 <p>
  To compare this record to something we can measure today, the researchers looked at tree rings in Florida slash pines, which date back to 1707. The pines grow more slowly in years with hurricanes, and growth rings from that time confirm the storm pattern suggested by the shipwrecks. Combining what they learned from the pines, shipwrecks, and modern records, the scientists patched together a picture of how a cooler climate put the brakes on the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
 </p>
 <p>
  The study could have important uses in predicting what might happen with tropical cyclone frequency if the planet’s atmosphere warms.
 </p>
 <p>
  Here’s Chris Mooney,
  <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/03/07/what-these-ancient-shipwrecks-could-be-telling-us-about-climate-change/">
   reporting
  </a>
  for the Washington Post:
 </p>
 <blockquote>
  <p>
   The result does not lead to any forecast when it comes to the hurricanes of the future, but at the same time, it’s certainly suggestive. After all, hurricanes derive their energy from the heat stored in tropical oceans. If seas are cooler — as they were between 1645 and 1715, when the Earth received less radiation from the sun — then there’s less explosive energy for storms to draw upon. If they’re warmer, as they are today, then all else being equal, there’s more opportunity for extreme storm intensification.
  </p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>
  Even though most of us don’t sail in tall ships these days, this study suggests that  people living on the coast might have to batten down the hatches if the climate continues to warm.
 </p>
</section>
</div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://app.ntsb.gov/news/2014/140210.html">
  National Transportation Safety Board
 </a>
 .
</p></div>
  



Spanish Shipwrecks Unveil Centuries of Hurricane Patterns





  
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 <p>
  More minds together don’t lead to better ideas, at least as far as homing pigeons go. In fact, larger pigeon flocks aren’t any more accurate than small ones.
 </p>
 <p>
  Biologists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany wanted to know how a group of pigeons decides which direction it thinks home is. The process, it turns out, is more similar to this year’s messy presidential primaries than you might suspect.
 </p>
 
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="More Candidates Don&#39;t Produce Better Leaders, At Least for Pigeons-pigeons-use.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/pigeons-use.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  A flock of pigeons.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            
 <p>
  The researchers trained 66 pigeons to return to a loft, putting them in a basket and driving them up to 30 miles away before releasing them. When the pigeons tried to head home, they began by circling. During this time, the birds selected whom to follow, democratically choosing their leaders. Birds with ambition occasionally lurched out of the circle, trying to gain followers.
 </p>
 <p>
  To test how group size changed the dynamic, the researchers released between 2 and 20 birds at a time. The larger the flock, the longer it spent choosing a direction—but its homing behavior didn’t improve, despite the extra time and brains.
 </p>
 <p>
  The finding goes against the prevailing theory of pigeon navigation.  Individual pigeons find their way using the Earth’s magnetic fields, which they sense using specialized cells with magnetic material that act as tiny compasses. Previous studies concluded that, while each pigeon doesn’t have a perfect compass, many imperfect compasses together leads to a more correct one. Yet a different principle seemed at play in this experiment.
 </p>
 <p>
  Most likely, it’s because larger flocks have more leader candidates to sort through, but the quality of the candidates isn’t any better. In fact, the researchers concluded that the pigeons didn’t seem to choose leaders based on their navigational experience, at all. They just followed the bird that happened to be acting most like a leader.
 </p>
 <p>
  “I think this is indeed likely to be the case,” said Dora Biro of Oxford University, who wasn’t involved in the study and is a member of the Oxford Navigation Group.
 </p>
 <p>
  Benjamin Pettit of the Oxford Navigation Group found previously that pigeons tend to follow the quickest bird rather than the most experienced.
 </p>
 <p>
  “The pigeons that flew fastest individually were more likely to lead flocks, regardless of the previous straightness of their homing routes,” he said.
 </p>
 <p>
  Biro said this study was “a great attempt” at better understanding flock decision making. However, the researchers should have tracked the pigeons using GPS for the entirety of their journey, she argued. Pigeons continue making decisions throughout their journey that can improve their accuracy.
 </p>
</section>
</div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nancydregan/5198614332/in/photolist-8VofVA-4jJ75y-cB9anA-9jztvA-7n9Dnc-8qeqpJ-qo3646-6oNFc8-4EpyTL-c6wvA5-zvrFz-nhjSm8-9JVNBf-praDsL-5Fp94j-qEUBJP-dQr553-71YZyw-4EkhiR-7cJ5ET-69YJWF-9GzcwT-5F9jux-d6iKHu-9CeLfU-vRiHAF-4pVTxq-4KFPYk-8QFwVS-opQLgk-9x29hE-2P9nzZ-obVmHi-7LzmJ8-6kKvxh-9Ywywq-7nNkTy-6UeidG-jkrCi9-dVqn8b-cMdWty-azHoKc-6ajPER-eDcDoa-9jwnzD-cg1RU5-5giEZ1-rTAAz6-98P4n2-oWozDT">
  Nancy Regan on Flickr (BY-NC)
 </a>
</p></div>
  



More Candidates Don't Produce Better Leaders, At Least for Pigeons





  
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 <p>
  For a brief window of time, Death Valley is full of life.
 </p>
 <p>
  A storm last fall led to a so-called super bloom in the valley, with over 20 species of plants putting up their spring colors this week.
 </p>
 <p>
  The desert gold flower gives most of the national park a yellow hue, but there are many others in the mix—brown eyed evening primrose, desert five-spot, and purple mat, to name a few.
 </p>
 
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="super-bloom" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/super-bloom.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  Flowers bring color today to Death Valley.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            
 <p>
  The hardy desert plants store up the necessary water for flowers, then quickly bloom while they have the resources and the weather is relatively cool. That window doesn’t last for long—by June, the average temperature is a searing 110˚ F.
 </p>
 <p>
  Here’s Tatiana Schlossberg
  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/death-valley-is-experiencing-a-colorful-superbloom.html?smid=tw-nytimes&amp;smtyp=cur&amp;_r=0">
   reporting
  </a>
  for the New York Times:
 </p>
 <blockquote>
  <p>
   The park gets about two inches of rain annually, so it always sees some wildflowers, though not as many or as varied. But it doesn’t take much more rain than that to completely dye the desert, [Death Valley National Park spokeswoman Abby] Wines said, making last fall’s unusually heavy rains particularly effective.
  </p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>
  Last’s year’s El Niño led to the conditions for this spring’s show. In October, a storm dumped 2.7 inches of rain on Death Valley, half an inch more than the national park usually gets in a year. The resulting flash flood swept through Grapevine Canyon and damaged Scotty’s Castle, a popular park attraction. The 1930s mansion is closed for the next year.
 </p>
 <p>
  The extra rain is a reminder that the climate in Death Valley is changing. Yearly rainfall has been on the rise over the past 50 years,
  <a href="http://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&amp;pageid=546687">
   according to the National Park Service
  </a>
  . The wettest growing season on record so far was 2004-2005. That season’s astounding 6.44 inches of rain led to the last super bloom.
 </p>
 <p>
  Some of the plants, including brown-eyed evening primrose and desert gold, are already beginning to lose their flowers and produce seeds, the National Parks Service
  <a href="http://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/wildflower-update-2016.htm">
   reports
  </a>
  . Daily high temperatures are starting to reach 90˚ F. But rain showers can save the flowers from an early death.
 </p>
 <p>
  What’s more, most of the park still has yet to bloom. Flowers on higher elevations in the park haven’t opened yet—there’s still snow on the mountains. To see a patch that’s just coming into spring, the park recommends taking Greenwater Road. But the flowers in the deepest valley will lose their petals by April.
 </p>
 <p>
  <i>
   For more on the wildlife in the hottest spot on the continent, check out this Nature episode, “
   <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/life-in-death-valley-introduction/5071/">
    Life in Death Valley
   </a>
   .”
  </i>
 </p>
</section>
</div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_cooper/24796975519/">
  Marc Cooper on Flickr (BY-SA)
 </a>
</p></div>
  



Death Valley Is Now Exploding With Color Thanks to a Freak October Storm





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 An expedition eighteen miles off the coast of Mexico is drilling into the seafloor to probe the crater created by the Chicxulub asteroid, the space rock that led to the dinosaur’s demise. Just a few days ago, the team struck granite, getting their first look at rock that had been shaped by the cataclysm 66 million years ago.
</p></div>
  

  
      <div class="related"></div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Though covered by hundreds of feet of sand and rock, the crater remains the same as it was at the end of the Cretaceous, potentially harboring invaluable insights about the asteroid’s impact.
</p>
<p>
 The Chicxulub asteroid, 8.5 miles across, hurtled into the Earth’s crust and caused solid granite to splash around like water, forming a crater 110 miles wide. The pressure on the Earth’s mantle set off
 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/oct/01/asteroid-that-killed-dinosaurs-also-intensified-volcanic-eruptions-study">
  a series of volcanic blasts
 </a>
 . Together with the dust from the crater, these volcanoes threw up enough debris to plunge the planet into darkness and cool the climate,
 <a href="http://phys.org/news/2014-05-proof-global-cooling-chicxulub-asteroid.html">
  touching off a mass extinction
 </a>
 .
</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 This expedition hopes to further sort out the chain of events that made Chicxulub such a catastrophe. At a depth of 2,000 feet below the seafloor, the drill reached a structure called the peak ring. The biggest asteroid strikes form two impact rings—an outer ridge in the upper crust and an inner peak ring made of deep crust. Peak rings are formed when the rock shoved deep into the crust rebounds upwards before collapsing and forming a wide ring. The Chicxulub peak ring leapt six miles high before settling into its current form. Reaching this formation and bringing up a sample of its rock was one of the expedition’s main goals.
</p>
<p>
 Here’s Eric Hand, reporting for Science:
</p></div>
  

  
      

<blockquote>
    <div class="rich-text"><p>
 “We’re feeling pretty good,” said co–chief scientist Sean Gulick in an interview from the deck of a drilling platform 30 kilometers offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. “I’m not getting much sleep out here, so we’re little delirious.”
</p></div>
</blockquote>

  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Although scientists have drilled into the buried crater before on land, this is the first offshore effort, and also the first to go after the crater’s “peak ring”—a circular ridge inside the crater rim that’s characteristic of the solar system’s largest impact craters. Astronomers see peak rings on the moon, Mars, and Mercury, but they have never been able to sample one on Earth until now.
</p>
<p>
 This expedition will let scientists tackle some long-burning questions. First of all, how did an asteroid that was 8.5 miles wide push the earth’s crust down to twice that depth? Then there’s the biology: how did life recover after this disaster? Did the crater zone itself become a fertile environment for ocean microbes just shortly after the impact? The answers probably lie deeper in the crust. But the core sample from the peak ring is the team’s first major milestone.
</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="http://www.eso.ecord.org/expeditions/364/mediapack.php">
  JLofi/ECORD_IODP
 </a>
</p></div>
  



<p>Though covered by hundreds of feet of sand and rock, the crater remains the same as it was at the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago.</p>

Scientists Get Unprecedented Look into Chicxulub Crater That Killed Dinosaurs





  
      <div class="rich-text"><section class="entry-content instapaper_body clearfix" itemprop="articleBody">
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 <p>
  Indian dancing frogs become some of the showiest amphibians in the world when they grow up. Adult males get up on rocks and wag their legs to attract females. But researchers just discovered their tadpoles—and it turns out the young of this species hide from the limelight they later seek as adults.
 </p>
 <p>
  The whole family of dancing frogs had managed to keep their tadpoles well-hidden since the group was first discovered 125 years ago. In fact, it’s the only family out of the 54 frog and toad families for which scientists hadn’t seen tadpoles. It was a riddle that Sathyabhama Das Biju of Delhi University couldn’t ignore after he found 14 new species of dancing frogs in India’s Western Ghats mountain range in 2014.
 </p>
 <p>
  Biju noticed a conspicuous absence of tadpoles in the streams where the adults live, but he did have one clue that would prove useful—the female frogs buried their eggs in the sandy streambed.
 </p>
 <p>
  When they returned to hunt for tadpoles, Biju and his team began digging in the streambed. In just an hour, they saw eight tadpoles wriggle away from them and burrow deeper into the sediment. Digging deeper, the biologists managed to catch 13 of them. The burrowing behavior means that the dancing frogs have fossorial tadpoles—a rare adaptation in which the young live underground.
 </p>
 
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="New tadpolesUSE" class="richtext-image full-width" height="360" width="640"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/new-tadpolesuse.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  The burrowing tadpoles uncovered by Biju's team.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            
 <p>
  A look at the tadpoles’ guts showed that they weren’t just hiding in the sand—they ate it, too. The animals’ long, spiraling intestine was totally full of sand grains. It seems they’re able to get some nutrients from the grit.
 </p>
 <p>
  Dancing frogs also turn out to be one of the few species that have ribs as tadpoles. The biologists think these bones might give them the structure needed to writhe like eels through the sand.
 </p>
 <p>
  The odd tadpoles impressed other biologists. Here’s Richa Malhotra,
  <a href="http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160330-these-newly-discovered-frogs-have-really-weird-tadpoles">
   reporting
  </a>
  for the BBC:
 </p>
 <blockquote>
  <p>
   “It is an interesting finding, predominantly because it was an entire family of frogs where we previously had very little indication of what the tadpoles were like,” says amphibian biologist Jodi Rowley of the Australian Museum Research Institute, who was not involved in the study.
  </p>
  <p>
   “Members of at least five other families are known to have fossorial tadpoles, so it’s not unique among the frog world, but it is relatively rare,” she adds.
  </p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>
  But this exciting discovery takes place against a grim backdrop: tropical amphibians
  <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/16/amphibians-terrifying-extinction-threat">
   are disappearing worldwide
  </a>
  in a mass extinction. It’s linked to habitat loss and other human-driven causes, and it’s unclear if we can stop it. One of the Indian dancing frogs is
  <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/58379/0">
   listed as endangered
  </a>
  , one is
  <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/58384/0">
   vulnerable
  </a>
  , and another
  <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/58378/0">
   is becoming threatened
  </a>
  due to clear-cut logging in the Western Ghats.
 </p>
 
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Dancing frogUSE" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/dancing-froguse.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  An Indian dancing frog performing its mating display.
 <div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            
 <p>
  Even while amphibians are disappearing, there are still many frog and salamander species left to discover and better understand. Learning the fundamental facts about how tropical tadpoles use their habitats can help scientists better conserve them.
 </p>
 <p>
  Watch a video from the researchers of the dancing frogs and their tadpoles below:
 </p>
 <div class="flex-video">
  <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jH0xoSy_W44?feature=oembed" width="780">
  </iframe>
 </div>
</section>
</div>
  

  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credits: SD Biju
</p></div>
  



Conor Gearin