# WANTED: information regarding live plants



## xitch (Dec 5, 2007)

Howdy,

I am looking for peer reviewed articles, or publications from "experienced" amphibian breeders which demonstrate husbandry techniques which utilize live plants inside primary enclosures.

I work in a frog laboratory that rears lab-raised and field-captured Hyla versicolor/chrysoscelis. I'm attempting to persuade the animal care & use committee that live plants may be beneficial to our animal's health in a variety of ways. Increased relative humidity in the primary enclosure & decrease of substrate moisture through evapo-transpiration, organic waste breakdown, decreased stress due to more hiding & perching locations, offering feeder-insect food [as in to dissuade crickets from biting sleeping frogs], are top points of interest.

I know a few of you out there work in academia and may know of resources which may help turn "my opinion" into something a little more concrete or at least shared by other professional animal care personel, or are more familiar with existing "husbandry protocols" in which live plants are recommended.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
mitch


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## Occidentalis (Jul 11, 2009)

I assume your institution has ISI Web of Science?
I'd start there. It's tough to find specific things like this for your proposal, so you should probably start just looking for publications involving captive populations of versicolor. From there, peer into the full text and see if you can find anything regarding conditions. Hopefully they will have citations, and one will lead to another until you find something regarding captive propogation in the lab, like exists en masse with xenopus and danio species.


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## Occidentalis (Jul 11, 2009)

You might also have more luck looking for studies on H. cinerea.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The problem is going to be with the Animal Lab guidelines which are published for use in standardizing husbandry conditions for lab animals. Animals reared in different conditions can demonstrate different behaviors or results (such as changes in metabolism and metabolic requirements or Tmax).. your best arguments are going to be for reducing stress in the animals but there is little really written specifically for amphibians however the guidelines in Health and Welfare of Captive Reptiles are just as appliciable (See Amazon.com: Health and Welfare of Captive Reptiles (9780412550805): Clifford Warwick, F.L. Frye, J.B. Murphy: Books). I would also suggest reviewing any relevant articles in ZooBiology, and International Zoo Yearbook. If you have access to the old Vivarium Magazines there are some good indepth article by noted people in there discussing some of those issues. 

The amount of nutrient cycling provided by the plants is going to be really minimal unless you are dealing with a very low bioload on the enclosure... counting on this to occur in closed systems for more than a few days can lead to increased levels of opportunistic soil bacteria (such as Aeromonas hydrophilia). 

Some comments,

Ed


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