CNDDB News Blog

The blank stare of foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) as it rests in a stream. What is it thinking about?

Today we celebrate members of the order Anura which is composed of frogs and toads. What’s not to love about our froggy friends? These moist goblins have large protruding eyes and a wide mouth that make them expressive, and some would describe them as “ugly cute.”

Perhaps the most remarkable life history feature of frogs and toads is their metamorphic life cycle. They start off as water dependent lifeforms, tadpoles, that have a tail for swimming and gills for breathing. The tadpoles transform into their adult form, growing lungs and limbs that enable them to survive out of the water.

Unfortunately, living a double life does not make them impervious. Amphibians are seen as “canaries in the coal mine,” indicators of environmental health. Global amphibian populations are in decline, and about one third of species are believed to be threatened. In some cases, they are even disappearing from protected areas without clear explanations. The exact cause of the decline is unknown but thought to be a combination of diverse factors that include habitat destruction, introduced species, chemical contaminants, disease, and climate change.

California is home to a number of frog species, so keep an eye out for our froggy friends next time you find yourself at a pond or stream. The CNDDB tracks 16 species of frogs or toads. Help us keep track of them by submitting your observations to us!

A frog fan explores a pond.

Today is Taxonomist Appreciation Day, an unofficial holiday which draws awareness to the incredibly important but often overlooked field of taxonomy. Taxonomists work to name, classify, and describe species, sorting organisms into groups based on shared traits and evolutionary history. Here at the CNDDB, we couldn’t do the work we do without taxonomists researching animal and plant families, writing descriptions of newly-discovered species, and reevaluating the work of past taxonomists to incorporate new data and methods. These behind-the-scenes efforts build a strong foundation for all species-based biodiversity conservation.

Many taxonomists over the past 150 years have had their hand in cataloguing and defining the species that make up California’s diverse flora and fauna. Today we’d like to highlight one taxonomist in particular: Alice Eastwood.

California Academy of Sciences, via Online Archive of California

Alice Eastwood (1859-1953) was a self-taught botanist who worked her way up to becoming the herbarium curator for the California Academy of Sciences from 1894-1949. When the 1906 earthquake hit San Francisco, she risked her life to rescue the academy’s botanical type specimens, protecting them from earthquake damage and the subsequent fires ravaging the city, even as she lost her home and personal possessions. After the earthquake, she worked to rebuild the herbarium’s collections, going out on numerous collecting trips throughout the Western US and trading duplicate specimens with other herbaria until the herbarium’s collections were three times as large as they had been before.

Without Alice Eastwood’s tireless work, much of our knowledge of California’s flora would have been lost forever. She published over 300 scientific articles, described 395 plant species, and founded the journal Leaflets of Western Botany with her friend and successor John Thomas Howell. She was especially interested in studying the Arctostaphylos, Castilleja, and Lupinus genera, all of which are well-represented in the California flora.

Alice Eastwood’s contributions to California botany are all over the place if you know where to look, and she is immortalized by the many taxa bearing her name. Two plant genera are named after her—Aliciella and Eastwoodia—as well as 17 species. Seven of these are CNPS-listed rare plants tracked by the CNDDB: Aliciella ripleyi (Ripley’s aliciella), Aliciella trilodon (Coyote gilia), Arctostaphylos crustacea ssp. eastwoodiana (Eastwood’s brittle-leaf manzanita), Delphinium parryi ssp. eastwoodiae (Eastwood’s larkspur), Eriogonum eastwoodianum (Eastwood’s buckwheat), Fritillaria eastwoodiae (Butte County fritillary), and Sedum laxum ssp. eastwoodiae (Red Mountain stonecrop). If you come across one of these special plants honored to bear her name, take a moment to remember Alice Eastwood, and then fill out an Online Field Survey Form to tell us about your discovery. It’s what she would have done.

As the coronavirus pandemic begins to affect our everyday lives, the CNDDB team is doing our part in “flattening the curve” and practicing social distancing by working from home. If you have any questions, please contact us via email. Email CNDDB@wildlife.ca.gov for data and species inquiries, and BDB@wildlife.ca.gov for subscription inquiries.

There will be limited network access, so we won’t be able to add and update as many EOs or spotted owl records as we normally would. Fortunately, we do have the Online Field Survey Form where you can submit your data. Data submitted through the Online Field Survey Form will be incorporated into the “Unprocessed Data from CNDDB Online Field Survey Form” [ds1002] in BIOS for all subscribers to access after our monthly distribution.

Blogs will continue to post; we have a couple of fun ones lined up for the next two days. Stay safe and healthy, everyone!

A small western toad sheltering-in-place.