A Question of Balance :: 5:00am 30th Aug 2018

Original air date - A Question of Balance :: 7:30pm 28th Aug 2018

_{Dr Arthur White brings updates on important research over ten years where the AQOB program and website have the series of reports} _{still included. This is a list of the projects’current status discussed today} _{1 The Lazarus Project – success is brooding} _{The Lazarus Project is still beset by technical problems, something which also happened in the control set-up. During the structuring of the cell wall some trigger or chemical code has to be met for the cells to go to their correct position. Attempts for the extinct gastric brooding frog and common species of frogs also failed. The team has spent the last two years doing a lot of mundane chemistry to discover the trigger needed. When they find the trigger the team will have learned how the control of the designation of particular cells in early embryos is determined, a real breakthrough!} _{2 Atrazine: the DDT of the new Millennium?} _{Atrazine, which has been widely scattered across Australia’s biological landscape, is still active after 30 years. We don’t know how to get rid of it and while some countries have banned it, Australia hasn’t. Atrazine is still a sleeping poison.} _{3 Chemical Weapons} _{Frogs, which have soft wet skins that are perfect places for fungi and bacteria to thrive, must have techniques to defend them. Frogs produce secretions with anti-fungal agents and bactericides. It is these secretions that will be the basis for a new generation of antibiotics. The good thing is frogs have used this defence for a hundred million years and there is no sign of any resistance... or is it just that we have never looked at this?} _{There is also a lot of research into microorganisms that occur in oceanic waters since the surprise discovery that there are vast numbers of viruses that naturally occur in seawater. Indeed, there are more marine viruses than terrestrial ones and marine creatures that lay largely unprotected eggs must have chemical safeguards against these viruses. Chemical warfare, which has been going since time began, will be the key to replacing things like penicillin.} _{4 Breeding stupid – designer frogs!} _{The issue of designer animals is not going to go away. The USA has certainly seen it with reptiles like the rose boa. Selective breeding produces different colour variants and each year a new colour variant becomes the fad. Older boas lose their value so people just get rid of them. Consequently a number of states (especially the southern ones) have an immense problem with the number of animals released into the wild. Some survive and become feral.} _{5 Green and Golden Bell Frog Recovery Plan for NSW} _{The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change is now the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). The current OEH does not prepare recovery plans because they don’t have the funding to enact on such plans! This is all part of a general reduction in funding to the environmental section of government services. The recovery plan for the Green and gold bell frog is still at the same draft stage as 10 years ago!} _{6 Where are the Painted Desert Frogs in NSW?} _{One of the problems for the Painted desert frog (Neobatrachus) is that there is another species that looks similar and occurs in NSW. When people claimed to have heard this desert burrowing frog in the far south west of NSW it got recorded on the Wildlife Atlas as a positive record. Dr White was suspicious because the habitat there was not right. He has visited several times and is convinced they are not there} _. _{While the frogs' own behavioural preference for gathering of males in groups to call to attract females (called lecting) was successful, the long term prognosis for the frogs is not good. The site has run into management problems so the frogs are unlikely to survive in the long term.}