How Do You Science | Meet a Wildlife Biologist

In this episode, I learn all about wildlife biology from my friend, Ryan Wagner. He told me about clipping turtle toenails and bathing froglets—all for science. And he recounted his recent adventure backpacking frogs into a national forest to return them to their former home. If you love amphibians and reptiles or conservation biology, this one's for you.

Hear about:

• stressed out turtles and their toenails
• chytrid fungus and frogs
• scientists helping Cascade frogs survive climate change
• how art makes science even better

Resources you can use:

• Want to see Ryan Wagner's wildlife photos or read his stories about science? Check out his portfolio
• Learn more about Cascades frogs in the PNW and why climate change is bad for them
• Get your amphibian fix with Nat Geo

As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Transcript

Ryan Wagner

I think little me would be very happy to hear that we never stopped going out in the woods and catching frogs and turtles and salamanders. 

Dr. Universe

Hey friends, I'm Doctor Universe. And if you're anything like me, you've got lots of big questions about our world. 

Today I'm talking with Ryan Wagner. He's a wildlife biologist and artist at Washington State University. He's clipped turtle toenails, bathed frogs in medicine, and even helped reintroduce frogs to their old habitat. Plus, he uses photography to tell stories about animals and the scientists who protect them. 

I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Let's get started. 

You once had a job clipping turtle toenails. 

Ryan Wagner

Yes, I did work two summers in a row basically as a turtle pedicurist. I was an undergraduate at Ohio University, and I was working with a master's student at the time who was studying the impacts of a recently built road on the surrounding habitat and specifically on the box turtle population. 

And one of the really interesting and innovative ways that she wanted to study this was to look at this turtle stress levels. And stress is a tricky thing to actually measure. You can, of course, take a blood sample and measure the level of cortisol, which is in us. It's corticosterone in amphibians and reptiles. And so you can take a sample of the blood, and you can get an immediate snapshot of what that animal is experiencing stress-wise. 

But the trouble with that is picking up a turtle and jabbing it with a needle is probably going to stress it out. And so it's not a great tool for looking at long-term stress in these animals. And we wanted to understand how do turtles right next to the roadway compare to turtles far from the road. 

And so the way we got around this issue is turtles will actually deposit their corticosterone in their toenails. I kind of almost think about it like rings in a tree. You know, you can see when the tree has experienced a good or a bad year of growth by the thickness of the rings. Well this, the amount of cort in the toenails. 

And so the way we would collect this is I'd catch a turtle. And of course we're working with box turtles, which clamp themselves up really quite tightly. Like if you've never handled a box turtle before, they create this very tight seal with the muscles on their plastron, which is the bottom shell. And they can pull that up close to the top shell, the carapace, and your fingers can't get into the notch in between at all. And, even if it can, the turtles are very strong, and you have to apply a lot of grip strength to try to open up the shell, and that makes them safe from animals like coyotes and raccoons that might want to get into their protective shell and try to eat them. 

So we would very carefully, often take as long as an hour to slowly work a file in between the top and the bottom shell, and slowly and carefully, so that we didn't hurt the turtle, pry open the shell. And then we'd, as quick as we could, wedge a rubber eraser in there to try to keep it open, since they're applying so much pressure. Anything harder? We didn't want to chip or damage the shell since that's a part of the living turtle. 

Dr. Universe

I have so many questions. 

Ryan Wagner

Yes. Go ahead. 

Dr. Universe

This rubber eraser. Like how big is it? Like a school eraser? 

Ryan Wagner

Yeah, like a school eraser. Like, I don't know, 2 inches, 3 inches long. Like the classic thing you'd buy at a office supply store. 

Dr. Universe

And are there two of you? Like somebody holding the turtle and somebody prying it open? 

Ryan Wagner

Sometimes there would be two of us. Luckily, box turtles are pretty small, so once we kind of got the routine figured out, often I would just sit in the woods with a little turtle in my lap. Often I'll also have the turtle facing away from me, so they'll start to peek out with their eyes to see, okay, is the coast clear? Is the threat gone? 

And so then they'll slowly lower their hinge, just enough that you might be able to wedge your fingers in there, and they'll clamp up and pinch you. Part of the job, I suppose. 

And so you'd wait for them to start to come out, and then you'd jump in real quick and grab onto the shell. And then slowly either use your fingers or the little file that we had to slowly prop open the shell. And then once it was big enough for us to wedge the eraser in, and then that would give us enough working room that you could usually get a leg out and be able to clip the toenails with a little cat clipper. 

And they didn't like the process, but, you know, it didn't hurt them. We tracked these animals for two years, and we would do this twice during that period. So it probably stressed them out in that moment, but it didn't have long term consequences for them. All of our turtles survived and ate and were healthy and happy by the end of the study. 

Dr. Universe

So what was your stress level like? 

Ryan Wagner

At the beginning? Very high. I had no idea what I was doing. You know, I was kind of, I was being asked by my supervisors like, "We don't know how to do this either. Try and get these turtles nails. We need it for science." 

Dr. Universe

Right now you're working on a project that has to do with frogs. Can you tell me more about that? 

Ryan Wagner

Yeah. That's right. So now I'm a PhD student at Washington State University, Vancouver. I'm entering my third year, and I'm working on Cascades Frogs, which are a high elevation species of frog which have populations from northern California through Oregon and Washington and into British Columbia. 

And especially at the southern portion of their range, they're impacted by a disease which has caused declines for amphibians, for frogs, all around the world. And so it's this really scary conservation problem that amphibian biologists have been facing for several decades now. It's called the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, and it is lethal disease for many species. 

It infects the skin. It makes the skin thicken, and frogs need their skin for electrolyte exchange, for water uptake, for gas exchange. And so when amphibian skin thickens in response to infection, the frogs are not able to function properly, and the most susceptible species end up going into cardiac arrest and dying. 

And we've seen hundreds of populations and hundreds of species affected by this disease. And so I'm working on this one species to try to understand some more things about disease and the things that we can do to help prevent declines or reverse declines. 

Dr. Universe

So, this fungus, is that something that they're running into, like, when they're in their home, or can they get it from each other? 

Ryan Wagner

Both. So they can encounter the fungus as a zoospore, which is basically a little microscopic tadpole-looking cell. It's a single cell with a tail, and so that actually will swim through the water and infect frogs. But those originate from the sporangia, which grow in the tissues of the skin and produce all the zoospores. 

And they grow on other amphibians. And so we don't know of, right now, an environmental reservoir. You know, something like detritus that they might be growing on. Right now, it's our understanding that they need live amphibian skin, or at least recently-alive amphibian skin, to grow and to feed on. And then that leads to infecting other frogs. 

So they can encounter it going into infected water, infected soil, or by coming into direct contact with each other. That's a really interesting life cycle, and it makes it tricky for dealing with it though. Chytrid, or BD as I might call it, is water-dependent, and so it only will grow in a moist environment. The trouble is frogs typically also need very moist environments, so you can't completely dry out your host frog because it won't do well either. 

Dr. Universe

So how are you treating frogs for that? 

Ryan Wagner

It's really cool. So it isn't really feasible to treat the environment for chytrid, like I mentioned. It needs water. There have been some instances, I believe, in Europe where they've completely drained ponds. They've treated them with antifungals. They've refilled them, and they put all the amphibians back. But that is not very practical for large wetland systems or for broad application. 

And so we have been using a technique that was developed that's a little bit more user-friendly, though still requires quite a bit of person-power and time. And so we are also using antifungal medications. We have a vet who prescribes them for us. It's a very common antifungal called itraconazole, which is used for treating dogs and cats for fungal infections. The bottle actually has a little picture of a cat on it. 

And so we dilute this to a very low concentration of the active ingredient, 0.0025% itraconazole diluted in water because amphibians, again, are very sensitive. And so we will bathe frogs for about a week, for 6 days with this really dilute concentration of itraconazole for 5 minutes per day. And that really reduces the infections, helps the frogs to survive their infections with BD or cure them of infection. 

And then we release them back into the woods where they can become reinfected. But often, if we've knocked back the infection, that has given their immune system the opportunity to boot back up and help them fight off infection and survive at a higher rate. And so we're seeing these treatments are improving frog survival really dramatically. 

Dr. Universe

And you're doing that out in the field, not in the lab. 

Ryan Wagner

Yes, that's right. Right after metamorphosis is the life stage that's most susceptible to infection with chytrid. And so that's the life stage that we focus on. 

And so we catch as many of these little froglets as we can, and we bring them into field laboratory, basically a big tent. And we house them. We feed them fruit flies. And we bathe them for six days and then release them. 

Dr. Universe

How do they seem to react to that? Do they mind? You know, it's really interesting. 

Ryan Wagner

Reptiles, amphibians are, I think, harder for people to read. They don't have facial expressions that change like mammals do. And so understanding how they're feeling is a lot harder. You have to pay a lot closer attention. 

There's definitely different types of body language that they can use that the experts can spot. And so we keep them in these enclosures, and we monitor them. We feed them. We see if they're eating. And we give them these baths. And so we're able to watch all of this body behavior and get some idea of whether it's causing any immediate, discomforting effects. 

Dr. Universe

If you could climb into a time machine and talk to yourself as a kid and tell that kid that you would be catching frogs as part of your job, would they be so impressed? 

Ryan Wagner

I think they'd be delighted. I think little-me would be very happy to hear that. We never stopped going out in the woods and catching frogs and turtles and salamanders. I was interested in the natural world since a very young age. It's really been the only thing I've ever wanted to do is work with animals and work outdoors and learn about wildlife. 

So we talked about turtles. We talked about frogs. Are there other animals you work on? Is it all amphibians and reptiles? 

Ryan Wagner

My graduate research has been all in amphibians. For my masters, I worked on mudpuppy salamanders, which are a giant salamander species mostly located on the East Coast and Midwest. And then in my PhD now I'm working on frogs. 

I have had some experience with other reptiles, amphibians. Snakes are kind of my first love. Something about them I am just fascinated by. I hope maybe in the future to do research projects that involve snakes and turtles again. 

That would be wonderful, but I'm interested broadly by wildlife disease now. Reptiles, amphibians are the thing that really got me interested in wildlife. Birds as well. But I've become very interested by disease as a system. Learning about Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease and learning about diseases in bighorn sheep and how these diseases spread through populations and what biologists can do to maybe intervene and protect populations, it's kind of opened my eyes to a much bigger and very important world. 

And, of course, disease has a big role in human health as well, especially diseases originating in wildlife populations called zoonotic diseases. That's what Covid-19 famously is. It likely originated in bats. And so understanding when disease emerges in wildlife and when it can spill over into humans is a really exciting world to be working in. 

Dr. Universe

It sounds like you sort of get to combine simply loving and learning about those animals with helping save animals that are endangered and also thinking about protecting humans. 

Ryan Wagner

I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do what I do. And you brought up trying to save these animals. And I think that's one area that often scientists can get a little bit cynical about is, okay, there's all these threats out there. We're doing our science as the best we can, but are we seeing real impact? And that's something that I've questioned throughout my career, like, can I say my contribution has made things better for any of these animals? 

But I was just part of a really exciting project that I'll share with you. It actually just took place last week. So for the last several years, I've been part of an effort to try to reintroduce Cascades frogs back into Lassen Volcanic National Park. My advisor's been talking with collaborators for about two decades on this project, and we just haven't had enough personnel or resources to be able to do it. 

And of course there's the threat of disease. We want to do it right. We don't want to just put the frog somewhere and then have disease come in and wipe them all out. Because Chytrids likely wiped out Cascades frogs from the national park. The last one was seen in the park in 2007, and there have been lots of surveys since, and none have been refound. And so it really does seem like the frogs disappeared from this high elevation habitat where they used to have a stronghold. 

And it's important to get them back there because, even though they are still existing south of the park in the national forest, those sites are pretty low elevation. And, with climate change, it's really likely that there are no longer going to be suitable conditions for the frogs in the next 100 years or so. 

But the high elevations may be able to serve as refugia as the world changes around them. The frogs need these very specific water and temperature conditions. And it's more likely that those conditions will remain in the high elevations. 

Dr. Universe

So what you're saying is that, if things get warmer, then the lower elevation might not be good for them. But if they can move higher elevation, it'll still be cooler. 

Ryan Wagner

Exactly. Yeah. We want the frogs to be upslope where they have disappeared because populations that are doing well in the low elevations, we may not have them in 50, 100 years. 

They don't have a way to move upslope on their own. These populations are very fragmented. Also, frogs are slow to disperse. They can move, but they can't move like a bird can or even a large mammal. And so they take generations often to shift where they're located. 

And so they need a little bit of a helping hand in order to get to places where they might be able to survive longer as climate change happens. 

Dr. Universe

So you guys released some? 

Ryan Wagner

Yeah. So we caught about a hundred frogs. We treated them with the itraconazole to reduce their infections. We fattened them up a little bit with wax worms and flies for a week. And then we packaged up all of these frogs in little tupperware containers, loaded them into our backpacks, and then hiked them out into the national park, and released them. 

And so the Cascades frog, for the first time, is back in Lassen Volcanic National Park since they've been gone for pretty much 20 years. 

Now it's a waiting game. We're going to be monitoring them. We're going to be watching disease and survival and hoping that they take hold at these new sites and reproduce and establish a new population. 

Dr. Universe

That moment when you're pulling frogs out of your backpack and releasing them must have been so exciting. 

Ryan Wagner

It was incredible. We were all, you know, cheering and high-fiving each other. The frogs immediately are behaving as we'd hoped they would. They're diving into the water. They're not trying to go up onto land. We watched them eat wild insects right in front of us. It was really incredible. 

You know, we kept saying to each other, "They look like they belong, even though they've never been to this site before. They look like they're going to be okay." And so that's our hope. 

Dr. Universe

Is something like that the best part of your job? 

Ryan Wagner

It's one of the best. I get to collaborate with a bunch of different scientists and members of these different organizations to make a really big thing happen. At the end of the day, it is just moving frogs from one site to another, but it requires a lot of effort and a lot of thinking ahead. 

One of my collaborators, formerly with the Forest Service, Dr. Karen Pope, she always says we've got to think like the frogs. Like, if I was a frog, what do I need? What do I need in the spring in order to breed? What do I need in the winter in order to survive hibernation? What kind of food do I need to grow? 

It's a funny thing to say, but it's been really eye opening to try to get in the head of these little organisms and try to anticipate what they're going to need and provide for them. 

Dr. Universe

The other cool thing is that you're also an artist. 

Ryan Wagner

Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I am really passionate about science, and I'm really passionate about art. 

We all have the capacity for creativity and the capacity for analytics, and I think that spending more time integrating those makes me both a better scientist and a better artist. I think I'd be worse at both if I only did one. 

And so the art that I have really focused my time on is photography and creating stories about organisms and about science. You know, you don't have to be a scientist, I hope, to understand the threat of extinction or the exciting prospects of a tool like an antifungal to help save organisms. And everybody has a favorite animal, and, unfortunately, that animal probably is in trouble in today's world. And there are scientists who are passionate about protecting it. 

And so I am trying to put those scientists as kind of the human character for people to connect with. You know, come for the charismatic organism or your favorite animal, and stay for the innovative science and the human story behind the wildlife science. 

Dr. Universe

Do you have any advice for kids who want to have a career like yours someday? 

Ryan Wagner

I think try to learn as much as you can. Find what makes you passionate. Find a place to spend time outdoors. I know that can be hard for a lot of people. Having access to green space is a huge issue, but there often are secret little oases buried in very suburban and urban areas. 

Get involved because your local university really likely has research happening. It may not be immediately obvious that you can volunteer and eventually get hired to work on these projects. 

I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, my first summer as an undergraduate, and was hired to do that box turtle project that I told you about. Before that, I was a volunteer on an amphibian road mortality project, just helping count, unfortunately, dead frogs. But you'd also see live ones and get to help move them across the road, put them back into their environment, and help save them from the road. 

And so it's not always pretty or flashy work, you know? I wasn't working with lions, big cats, which a lot of people love, or dolphins, things like that. But if you're willing to work on some underappreciated animals -- snakes and lizards and turtles or insects or algae -- there's opportunities to get involved with science and to learn a lot about what it means to be a scientist. And potentially be able to follow it as a career. 

You are wanted in this space. Hopefully you can find the mentors that will support and build you up. I think there are a lot of them. 

Dr. Universe

That's all for this episode, friends. Big thanks to Ryan Wagner for telling us all about wildlife biology. 

As always, if you've got a science question for me, you can submit it at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. That's A S K D R U N I V E R SE dot W S U dot E D U. 

Who knows where your questions will take us next.