WALI: I’m joining my friend Tina who’s getting her Ph.D. She’s doing research in the Everglades and let me come along for the ride.

TINA: Ready?

WALI: Yeah

TINA: We’re in the Florida Everglades. Basically, it’s a giant wetland and it’s unique. There’s no other place like it in the world.

TINA: We have all different organisms living here and it hasn’t been entirely manipulated by humans yet.

TINA: I’ve been working out here for probably like five years and I think it’s great. It’s a beautiful place. I love coming out here. I love my job. It’s nice just to be able to cruise around on an airboat. It’s fun.

TINA: I’m studying a frog called the pig frog that people harvest for frog legs, but that also has an important role within the eco-system itself.

TINA: Okay, ready?

WALI: Yeah

TINA: Ahh, very good

TINA: They call them the pig frog because of their call which sounds like a swine or a pig grunting.

TINA: That’s good.

WALI: Wait a minute, they’re going crazy.

TINA: I like them because they’re cute. No, just kidding. I like them because they’re very interesting animals and again because they have this complex lifecycle.

TINA: They lay their eggs in water and they have a tadpole phase that depends on water and then most frogs emerge out to terrestrial systems. These frogs stay within the water.

TINA: Oh,I don’t think he likes that. That’s their call. They have different calls if you’re holding them they have a release call that’s basically, “Hey don’t hold onto me,” and then they have calls to attract females or territorial calls, too…

TINA: I read about these frogs and there’s really not that much known about them and so I decided that would be a pretty interesting project – to study the uses of these frogs, how people use them and collect them. Basically do more of an ecological focus study and look at the ecology of these frogs and what they eat, when they reproduce, where do they live um, and how abundant they are.

TINA: A lot of people think frogs to be indicators of wetland systems’ health. Because frogs have permeable skin, they’re believed to be susceptible to toxins and so forth, so if you all of a sudden see a large die off of frogs that may tell you that there is something wrong within that system like, either the PH or there is toxins or there’s something quite not right within the water or that system.

TINA: That’s where frogs come in, frogs are an intermediate role within the Everglades food web.

TINA: They eat lots of insects, crayfish, they eat each other. They are cannibals.

WALI: No kidding, they eat each other?

TINA: Yes.

WALI: I didn’t know that. Frogs eat each other.

TINA: They eat each other. Some frogs, not all. But these guys do.

TINA: We need to know as much about a whole system as we can to understand how it all fits together. These systems are integral to not just what is going on here in South Florida but, for example, you know, there’s a lot of birds that come from New York that pass through Miami on their way going south.

TINA: So, if you change, if you remove a large part of the system down here, affect a food source for them, that’s going to affect those birds in New York so you don’t think it of that way, but it’s all tied together.

TINA: Wetlands in general are really endangered throughout the world because they tend to, I mean as more people inhabit the plant and population grows you have more wetlands being destroyed and some of these are really isolated pockets or you have these huge - like the Everglades, this huge system.

TINA: Frogs need water. If you don’t have water you don’t have frogs.

TINA: Here let’s look.

WALI: All right, so he’s ready to take off, he’s like a rocket. Try to grab him. Woah! That’s ingenious. That’s really good how you just go out there and just grab them like that.

WALI: Is it true I’ll get warts if I hold onto it too long?

TINA: No, that’s not true,

WALI: That’s not true?

TINA: No. Nope, that’s a myth.

WALI: Do they bite?

TINA: No, they don’t bite, they don’t do anything to you. They are very nice.

WALI: Really?

TINA: Yes

WALI: How about a nice warm hug?

TINA: You can hug him.

TINA: So we are just trying to understand um how many frogs there are and when they reproduce, um and things like that. And again everything that happens here affects what happens to us in the cities – so, it’s all tied together. We can learn a lot from what’s out here.

WALI: Sorry I was just rehearsing.

TINA: That’s not. That’s not releasing, that’s…

TINA: All right, there they are.

WALI: So are we going to let them go?

TINA: Yeah.

WALI: Go ahead, you’re on camera. Do your thing. Like how we rehearsed. C’mon. We talked about this. All right, get you to the edge. There!

WALI: Listen I had a great time with ya. Um, we’ll talk… call me when you get home, you know how I worry.

TINA: For someone who’s never been out here to come out here is a completely amazing experience, especially, I mean - the day it’s beautiful, at night, it’s incredible.

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