Efficient induction of spawning of Northern leopard frogs (Lithobates pipiens) during and outside the natural breeding season
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Amphibian declines are now recognized globally. It is also well known that many anurans do not reproduce easily in captivity, especially when held over long periods, or if they require hibernation before breeding. A simple method to induce spawning and subsequent development of large numbers of healthy tadpoles is therefore required to meet research and conservation goals. METHODS: The method is based on simultaneous injection of both female and male leopard frogs, Lithobates pipiens (formerly called Rana pipiens) with a cocktail of a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRH-A) and a dopamine antagonist. We call this the AMPHIPLEX method, which is derived from the combination of the words amphibian and amplexus. Following injection, the animals are thereby induced, and perform amplexus and natural fertilization under captive conditions. RESULTS: We tested combinations of a GnRH agonist with 2 different dopamine antagonists in L. pipiens in the breeding season. The combination of des-Gly(10), D-Ala(6), Pro-NHEt(9)-GnRH (0.4 micrograms/g body weight; GnRH-A) with metoclopramide hydrochloride (10 micrograms/g body weight; MET) or domperidone (DOM) were equally effective, producing 89% and 88% successful spawning, respectively. This yielded more than 44,000 eggs for the 16/18 females that ovulated in the GnRH-A+MET group, and more than 39,000 eggs for the 15/17 females that ovulated in the GnRH-A+DOM group. We further tested the GnRH-A+MET in frogs collected in the wild in late autumn and hibernated for a short period under laboratory conditions, and report a low spawning success (43%). However, GnRH-A priming 24 hours prior to injections of the GnRH-A+MET cocktail in animals hibernated for 5-6 weeks produced out-of-season spawning (89%) and fertilization (85%) comparable to those we observed for in-season spawning. Assessment of age and weight at metamorphosis indicated that L. pipiens tadpoles resulting from out-of-season spawning grew normally and metamorphosed successfully. CONCLUSION: We provide evidence for successful captive breeding of the leopard frog, L. pipiens. This simple protocol can be used to obtain large numbers of eggs in a predictable, timed manner.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".