It's another stunning Malagasy #dartfrog/#poisonfrog for today's #FrogOfTheDay, #42 Mantella cowani Boulenger, 1882! A highly threatened, actively conserved and managed frog from the highlands of central #Madagascar
#MadagascarFrogs
📸D.Edmonds/CalPhotos

This thread will cover only a tiny fraction of the work on Mantella cowanii because, being so charismatic and threatened, it has received quite a bit of attention.
#MadagascarFrogs
We start at the very beginning: the first specimens, two females, were collected by Reverend Deans Cowan in East Betsileo, Madagascar, and sent to London, where George Albert Boulenger described the species in 1882.
#MadagascarFrogs
Boulenger placed the species in his new genus, Mantella, along with ebenaui, betsileo, and madagascariensis. He recognised that the other Malagasy poison frogs were distinct from the Dendrobates of the Americas, although he did keep them in the Dendrobatidae.
#MadagascarFrogs
As more specimens were collected, it became clear that the species was highly variable. In 1978, Jean Guibé wrote with interest about this variability, describing a new subspecies, M. cowani nigricans—today a full species. #MadagascarFrogs
https://t.co/dwaHMbrYbj
Although Guibé was wrong about the affinities of those two species, it is true that there is astounding variability of colour in this (and other) Mantella species, and that they evidently hybridise with other species.
#MadagascarFrogs
📸B.Freiermuth/CalPhotos
Little was known about Mantella cowanii in the wild until the 1990s. By 1999, when Miguel Vences et al. published a revision of Mantella, it was known from a few different locations, but populations between it and M. baroni posed challenges to identification.
#MadagascarFrogs
These frogs occur in bizarre habitat in central Madagascar, often with wet, exposed rocks interspersed with low bushes.
📸Mantella cowanii Action Plan, 2021–2025 (on which more below)
The first (?) DNA-based phylogeny came out in 2002, confirming close affinity with M. baroni and M. nigricans, and showing that Malagasy poison frogs may have Müllerian mimicry generating repeated colour pattern evolution. https://t.co/4qqzbiiAev
#MadagascarFrogs
The hybridisation of M. cowanii with M. baroni received a lot of interest, in part because the species are generally morphologically and ecologically distinct.
https://t.co/VMFGZ7tP0Y
https://t.co/9uFZ7KBRzZ
International interest has always been strong in the beautiful #Mantella #frogs, so M. cowanii were targeted for the pet trade. Between 1988 and 2003, some 12,877 individuals were reportedly exported from Madagascar.
https://t.co/gJXip5xMTv
#MadagascarFrogs
In 2005, @CITES imposed a zero quota on M. cowanii, effectively banning export. For a species known from only a few locations in threatened habitat, and low fecundity (Tessa et al., see link), harvesting at these rates was unsustainable.
#MadagascarFrogs
https://t.co/SAON3F2VqF
Until 2014, Mantella cowanii was listed as Critically Endangered, but it was then downgraded to Endangered. Apparently the population declines seen until 2003 were halted by the cessation of trade. https://t.co/2rS29qFNQT
#MadagascarFrogs
Nevertheless, Mantella cowanii is heavily threatened. Representatives of @ASG_IUCN @Voakajy @amphibiansorg @chesterzoo and other organisations are actively involved in its conservation. A new action plan for 2021–2025 was just released.
#MadagascarFrogs
https://t.co/ozm89CMSSR
As I understand it, captive populations of Mantella cowanii are being maintained. So, if extirpated, it might be possible to reintroduce this frog, as long as habitat remains available. So there is hope for the 'harlequin' mantella!
#MadagascarFrogs

More from Science

@mugecevik is an excellent scientist and a responsible professional. She likely read the paper more carefully than most. She grasped some of its strengths and weaknesses that are not apparent from a cursory glance. Below, I will mention a few points some may have missed.
1/


The paper does NOT evaluate the effect of school closures. Instead it conflates all ‘educational settings' into a single category, which includes universities.
2/

The paper primarily evaluates data from March and April 2020. The article is not particularly clear about this limitation, but the information can be found in the hefty supplementary material.
3/


The authors applied four different regression methods (some fancier than others) to the same data. The outcomes of the different regression models are correlated (enough to reach statistical significance), but they vary a lot. (heat map on the right below).
4/


The effect of individual interventions is extremely difficult to disentangle as the authors stress themselves. There is a very large number of interventions considered and the model was run on 49 countries and 26 US States (and not >200 countries).
5/
I want to share my thoughts, as someone who has been so alarmed by the so-called "dissident" scientists like Gupta, Heneghan, Kuldorff, Bhattacharya, & Ioannidis who consider themselves brave Galileos unfairly treated by "establishment scientists." I will try not to swear. 1/n


I want to talk about 3 things:
‼️Their fringe views are inhumane, unethical junk science that promotes harm
‼️They complain that they've been marginalized but this is simply untrue
‼️I am sick of people telling me we have to "listen to both sides." There aren't 2 sides here 2/n

These 'dissident' scientists have consistently downplayed COVID-19, urging policymakers not to take aggressive control measures. They claim it is not a serious threat. Gupta even went on TV saying people under 65 shouldn't worry about it!

RECEIPTS

They have consistently argued that policymakers should just let the virus rip, in an attempt to reach herd immunity by natural infection. Kuldorff *continues* to argue for this even now that we have many highly effective, safe vaccines.


We've never controlled a deadly, contagious pandemic before by just letting the virus spread, as this approach kills & disables too many people. In Manaus, Brazil, 66% of the city was infected & an astonishing *1 in 500* people died of COVID-19
https://t.co/hXlo8qgkD0
Look like that they got a classical case of PCR Cross-Contamination.
They had 2 fabricated samples (SRX9714436 and SRX9714921) on the same PCR run. Alongside with Lung07. They did not perform metagenomic sequencing on the “feces” and they did not get


A positive oral or anal swab from anywhere in their sampling. Feces came from anus and if these were positive the anal swabs must also be positive. Clearly it got there after the NA have been extracted and were from the very low-level degraded RNA which were mutagenized from

The Taq.
https://t.co/yKXCgiT29w to see SRX9714921 and SRX9714436.
Human+Mouse in the positive SRA, human in both of them. Seeing human+mouse in identical proportions across 3 different sequencers (PRJNA573298, A22, SEX9714436) are pretty straight indication that the originals

Were already contaminated with Human and mouse from the very beginning, and that this contamination is due to dishonesty in the sample handling process which prescribe a spiking of samples in ACE2-HEK293T/A549, VERO E6 and Human lung xenograft mouse.

The “lineages” they claimed to have found aren’t mutational lineages at all—all the mutations they see on these sequences were unique to that specific sequence, and are the result of RNA degradation and from the Taq polymerase errors accumulated from the nested PCR process

You May Also Like

Margatha Natarajar murthi - Uthirakosamangai temple near Ramanathapuram,TN
#ArudraDarisanam
Unique Natarajar made of emerlad is abt 6 feet tall.
It is always covered with sandal paste.Only on Thriuvadhirai Star in month Margazhi-Nataraja can be worshipped without sandal paste.


After removing the sandal paste,day long rituals & various abhishekam will be
https://t.co/e1Ye8DrNWb day Maragatha Nataraja sannandhi will be closed after anointing the murthi with fresh sandal paste.Maragatha Natarajar is covered with sandal paste throughout the year


as Emerald has scientific property of its molecules getting disturbed when exposed to light/water/sound.This is an ancient Shiva temple considered to be 3000 years old -believed to be where Bhagwan Shiva gave Veda gyaana to Parvati Devi.This temple has some stunning sculptures.