Breeding Toads and the Amplexus Position

During a trout release on Wednesday, May 11 in the Salmon Creek at Salt Point, students from TST BOCES Turning Point program were in for a special treat when we discovered a pond filled with breeding toads.

In the Springtime, male and female toads gather in large numbers to breed in small bodies of water with very little movement like ponds, marshes and ditches, which is just what students from Sarah Kunz' class were able to witness first-hand.

In the mating position of toads, called amplexus, the male toad clasps to the female's back and the pair swims around as the female, filled with eggs, selects a site for depositing them. 

Toad eggs are distinguishable from frog eggs because toads lay eggs in long jelly-like strings while frogs lay eggs in a large cluster. Females expel several thousand eggs, with the capacity of releasing up to 30,000 eggs. Males fertilize the egg with their sperm through the amplexus position. 

The jelly surrounding the eggs swell in the water until each egg is covered with a thick coating. The coating allows the eggs to float to the surface of the water where there is more oxygen for the eggs to survive. 

In a few days, a tadpole will hatch from each fertilized egg and over the course of four to six weeks, the tadpole will go through three stages of development- growing longer, growing a body and tail, then absorbing the tail and growing limbs before finally metamorphosing into a small toad. 

Young toads will leave the pond they lived in as tadpoles and may only return to breed again later on.

Trout Release with TST BOCES Turning Point

Schools from across the Cayuga Lake Watershed involved in the Trout in the Classroom program are in the process of releasing trout into creeks and rivers feeding into Cayuga Lake after spending most of the school year raising the trout in their classroom. 

Students from TST BOCES Turning Point program came out to Salmon Creek at Salt Point, where they walked upstream to find a good spot to release their trout. The students first evaluated the quality of the stream by gathering a sample of macroinvertebrates and using the macroinvertebrate identification key to assess the aquatic life before releasing the trout.

In their stream sample, students in Sarah Kunz' class found lots of mayfly larvae, stoneflies and crayfish among the insects living in the creek. All of these macroinvertebrates will eventually be food to the young trout being released, so it was important to first make sure the trout would have enough food to eat. They also use the macroinvertebrates sample as an indicator of a healthy stream life, since insects are dependent on clean water to survive. The class determined that the creek possessed enough biodiversity to make it habitable for the trout to survive in the water, and moved upstream away from their sampling area to release the trout.

Each student got a small container filled with a couple trout that they had raised throughout the year in their classroom. Students gently released their trout into a pool of water just upstream from a swift current and watched as the trout paused for a minute to acclimate, and then swim away to their new home in the wild!

Monster Trout

As our classes anticipate releasing their trout over the coming weeks, a little friendly competition is always fun.  Liz McCheyne's fifth grade class at South Seneca Elementary has tossed out the first challenge!

My class is wondering how big your biggest trout is---I'm including a picture of Monster, our tank giant.  He is 15.1 cm and he's a cannibal so we've had to provide lots of cover for his peers. Please send pics of your big ones.

Tennesee Trout Release!

Spring is here, and our network of schools will be releasing trout to local streams over the next six weeks.  We'll try to post updates and opportunities to observe the fun and learning!

One of our local Trout Unlimited volunteers, Bob Walters, just shared this great article about a Trout in the Classroom program in Tennessee... spring comes earlier down there, and so they are releasing trout before we do. 

We love some of the adaptations they are using, and my goal is to build a fish observation box, just like this one.  Can you name all three species of trout visible?

Answers:  top fish is a brown trout; lower left is a rainbow and lower right is a brook trout!  (We only raise brown and brook trout in our classrooms.)