If you, like us, love frogs with their unique look, quirky calls and behaviours, here’s something you need to know…


The growling grass frog (Litoria raniformis), once very common, is now endangered in Victoria (Australia) because of habitat loss and water pollution. Image from Wikipedia.

We are worried about a pesticide that is commonly used to combat household pests and insect pests in orchards worldwide. This pesticide was shown to be present in streams in southeast Australia and we suspect that it may interfere with the hormone balance of wildlife. Hormones are essential for normal development, and - in amphibians (frogs and salamanders) - metamorphosis.  We fear that the presence of this pesticide in our environment could affect these processes in native frog species that are already under pressure from habitat loss, other forms of pollution and climate change. Nearly one-third of the world's amphibian species are threatened or extinct - within Australia, most are in the southeast.

We are calling on you to help us investigate the pesticide for hormone-disrupting activity. We will use, amongst other techniques, a state-of-the-art and very sensitive 'glowing tadpole' test developed by our French collaborators. In this test, tadpoles from Xenopus, the South African clawed toad, glow when they are exposed to low concentrations of hormone-disrupting chemicals - thus identifying problematic environmental chemicals. We will also test how the pesticide affects gene expression in these tadpoles.

These pilot experiments will provide us with solid, scientific proof that will allow us to make a strong case with policy makers and other stakeholders to fund further research into this chemical, to look for sustainable alternatives and/or to adjust policies accordingly. You can help improve the life of our fascinating frogs and other critters!


Photograph of a fluorescent tadpole exposed to thyroid hormone-like chemicals. Image courtesy of WatchFrog.

Our team

The funds will be used to buy all the necessary reagents and consumables to test different concentrations of the pesticide in the 'glowing tadpole test' to screen for its hormone-disrupting capacity and to validate the results of the screen by investigating the effect of the pesticide on tadpole gene expression.

Reagents and consumables for the tadpole screen are estimated to cost about AU $7,500 and the subsequent gene expression study will cost around AU $3,000.

For this project we will be using technology that was developed specifically to do exactly what we want to do, and has been used to test the hormone-disrupting properties of a number of chemicals already. We will get assistance from our French collaborators who are the creators of this technique.

There's a risk that the chemical doesn't mess with the frogs' thyroid hormone balance - but that's really a very good outcome! Our experiments won't give us any information about other hormonal systems though. So even when the pesticide appears to be no threat to the hormone system that we are investigating, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't investigate it further.