TADPOLE - Tropical Amphibian Distribution and Population Operation for Life-saving Efforts - is a non-profit organization dedicated to informing and educating the public regarding our obligation to protect and preserve the Amazon's amphibian species.
TADPOLE uses computer mapping and database management technology to document the distribution and population of amphibian species. Field studies along with collective research provide the necessary data to determine amphibian habitat ranges and approximate populations. By using satellite imagery we can show areas of environmental concern, and study the relationships between them and the fluctuation of amphibian ranges and populations. This will enable us to identify species and areas of most immediate concern.
Amphibians are an excellent bio-indicator of threats to the environment and therefore can be used to measure the health of our environment. Amphibian diversity and populations indicate the quality of water, soil and air. The degradation caused by roads, logging, mining, and human encroachment directly affects the quality and vital stability of the Amazon basin.
Why should we care? We are all connected by the air we breathe, food we eat and water we drink. By protecting the amphibians and their precious environments, we can ensure the future of these pristine places for our children to enjoy, learn and benefit. The Amazon is full of new species yet to be discovered, with benefits unknown. The degradation by human activities such as oil development and accompanying roads threatens to destroy it.
Over the years TADPOLE has been honored by the dedication of its volunteers. Engaging in long hard hot days and nights surrounded by multitudes of insects from stinging and biting to just annoying by sheer numbers, TADPOLE’s volunteers have assisted in discovering new species, climbing trees, photo-documenting species, videography and most importantly, entering this vital data for publications, books, magazines and habitat conservation and protection. Volunteers are accepted upon every TADPOLE expedition. Volunteers are also welcome to assist in San Marcos, TX on photos, data and even specimens. Contact us at info@tadpoleorg.org
All donations to TADPOLE are directed towards equipment, travel and research expenses. TADPOLE is strictly a research-based organization working in YASUNÍ Biosphere Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Field assistants have traveled from Australia, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico and across the US to locate amphibians on the forest floor, sub-canopy and canopy. It is an amazing and even life changing experience as field assistants have located and captured frogs to photo-document, clip toes and release; record calling frogs; document behavior, sift through bromeliad contents, count and identify species; locate bromeliads in the pristine primary and various stages of secondary rainforest along oil roads; and assist lead researcher Shawn McCracken climb trees locating new species of frogs in Aechmea zebrina bromeliads.
TADPOLE evolved as the lead researcher, Shawn McCracken, began his undergraduate studies and founded the non-profit research organization to study amphibians in the Amazon basin. Shawn is the primary investigator conducting herpetofauna inventories in Ecuador's Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. Bejat McCracken assists by photo-documenting all species, videography and as a field assistant. Shawn has established collaborative relationships with colleagues at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito - Ecuador and King's College London. Results from TADPOLE’s work and his PhD thesis contributed significantly to identifying Yasuní as the current world record holder of herpetofauna diversity at the landscape level. The publication of these results was a central part of the scientific foundation supporting the United Nations sponsored Yasuní-ITT initiative to preserve the region from further oil extraction.
TADPOLE’s early work in Yasuní would lead Shawn to the top of the canopy to find the unknown frogs that have been heard calling from large water-filled epiphytic tank bromeliads. Shawn’s PhD research focused on environmental quality effects and the ecological context of a rainforest canopy bromeliad fauna. Shawn has published a novel field protocol for bromeliad patch sampling and several new anuran species descriptions discovered consequent of the approach. Shawn also tested anurans for the deadly amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), across the vertical forest strata using molecular techniques and published the first detection of Bd in Amazonia and high canopy inhabiting anurans. The extensive natural history data collected on the large tank bromeliad Aechmea zebrina and conditions support a high diversity of invertebrates and vertebrates in the high canopy due to it’s moderate microclimate and structure of the plant.
Bromeliad patch sampling for anurans across varying levels of forest disturbance showed a significant decrease in anuran presence and abundance at the lowest level of disturbance (linear oil road gap of 25 m bordered by intact forest). Bromeliad abundance was also reduced at low-level disturbance and completely absent from the highest disturbance sites. This work highlights the importance of canopy bromeliads and their faunal communities as early harbingers of anthropogenic forest disturbance effects. An NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a two-year NSF GK-12 Fellowship, several prestigious external awards, and internal awards at Texas State University funded Shawn’s PhD work.
Individual donors have generously funded TADPOLE’s research expeditions over the years. TADPOLE accepts donations year round through network for good.
TADPOLE’s board is highly diverse and dedicated group of individuals that have been a part of the organization since it’s infancy.
DR. SHAWN McCRACKEN
• Founder & president
• Assistant Research Professor at Texas State University
• Lead Researcher
BEJAT McCRACKEN
• Secretary & treasurer
• Executive Director of Finding Species
• Artist, Photographer
DR. KELLY SWING
• Board member
• Professor of Tropical Ecology at
Boston University and Universidad
San Francisco de Quito
• Director of Tiputini Biodiversity Station
JAIME GUERRA
• Board member
• Teaching Fellow at
Boston University and
Universidad San Francisco
de Quito