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incredulousTopic: Frog Blog Profiles
I have a terrific interview for you today, Ken Storey, Professor of Biology at Carleton University at Ottawa, Canada. He has done extensive research with various amphibians and their unique adaptations.
Top Ten Questions on the Board Wendell’s Frog Blog Online Interview
1) WFB: Name, Rank and Serial Number. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Maybe a little about your family? (Married? Siblings?) Hobbies?
KS: My name is Ken Storey and I am a professor of Biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. I am originally from Alberta and did undergraduate work at the University of Calgary and graduate work at the University of British Columbia. I then worked at Duke University for several years before returning to Canada. My wife Janet works with me in the lab and I have two daughters, now in university. You can find out more about my research and the animals that we work with on my website at www.carleton.ca/~kbstorey
2) WFB: What sparked your interest in amphibians? What is your favorite amphibian, and why?
KS: Amphibians are extremely interesting to us because they have conquered so many different environments despite having very limited physical defenses. Hence, amphibians have specialized in biochemical defenses. For example, amphibian skin is highly water permeable and this makes them vulnerable to a variety of environmental insults such as freezing, desiccation, and high salt or toxins in water. Two species that we work on have solved water stress problems that are almost polar opposites – wood frogs have learned the biochemical tricks of freezing survival in order to endure northern winters whereas spadefoot toads endure heat and desiccation in the Arizona desert. My favorite amphibian is the wood frog, Rana sylvatica. This incredible animal can withstand the freezing of up to 65% of its total body water and lives frozen for weeks or months each year. Wood frogs have a variety of amazing biochemical adaptations that support freeze tolerance and we are exploring these with an ultimate goal of applying the tricks used by wood frogs to freezing human organs that are harvested for transplant. Currently organ transplantation is limited by the very short times that organs remain viable meaning that they must be transferred very quickly from donor to recipient and that many usable organs are ultimately discarded because no matched potential recipient is currently waiting. If freezing storage can be perfected, then donated organs can be kept for much longer which will allow a larger number of organs to be matched with recipients, thereby greatly expanding the use of organ donation and transplant.
3) WFB: Do you keep any pets?
KS: When our girls were little, we had many different kinds of pets including fish, lizards, turtles and gerbils. Now we just have one Carolina box turtle and one Chaco tortoise who wander free around the house, although the box turtle hibernates in a cold corner near the garage for 3-4 midwinter months.
4) WFB: How are you involved with amphibians and their conservation?
KS: Our research is not directly involved with conservation but I feel that we make contributions in two important ways:
(1) our work on frozen frogs attracts a lot of media attention and I think that the more people hear about the amazing abilities of animals, the more likely they are to want to help preserve the diversity of nature, and
(2) the more we find out about how our native Canadian and American animals live and interact with their natural environments, the more we can understand the potential damage that human activities do to the environment and, hopefully, then we can make better choices when disrupting nature with human intrusions.
5) WFB: How did you get involved in this?
KS: Two happy accidents might be credited with shaping my career. One was when my first graduate supervisor decided to move back to England and all of his students had to scramble to find other supervisors. I was lucky enough to stumble into the lab of PW Hochachka who, almost single-handedly, built the field of biochemical adaptation. He pointed me at a turtle that can live for months without oxygen while submerged in the winter and set me up for a life time of studying the biochemistry of wonderful animals. The second happy accident was when an ecologist in Minnesota accidently left his day’s collection of wood frogs and tree frogs in the trunk of his car overnight. They were frozen solid the next morning and seemingly destined to become preserved museum specimens but when brought into the lab, the frogs quickly revived. The subsequent report of this amazing phenomenon in Science magazine (SCHMID, W.D. Science 215:697-698, 1982) sparked our 25 years of studies of natural freezing survival in animals.
6) WFB: What has been the most fulfilling part of working with amphibians for you?
KS: Amphibians have so many amazing abilities – some can freeze, some live without oxygen for long periods of time, others lose as much as 60% of their body water and still survive, others enter long periods of dormancy, some have deadly toxins, others have novel antibiotics in their skin. Among vertebrate animals I think they have the most novel and unique lifestyles and the broadest range adaptive strategies for life.
7) WFB: What would be the best way for others to get involved as you have?
KS: So much of science is, quite understandably, directed towards improving the human condition and so many students are attracted to careers in medical, pharmaceutical, veterinary or agricultural sciences. Careers in basic biology and biochemistry are less fashionable today but very rewarding. We owe it to ourselves to always encourage some young scientists to pursue science for the love of science for it is from basic science, not applied science, that most of the key advances in understanding the principles of life have arisen.
8) WFB: How did you learn about amphibians to do what you do?
KS: Mostly I just learned about each species one at a time as I searched for interesting model animals to explore different biochemical adaptations.
9) WFB: What is the most important thing you want others to know?
KS: That life is wonderful. That all life on earth is linked by a unified set of biochemical reactions and that for every environment that we can imagine on earth, there is some organism that has evolved a way to modify and adapt its core biochemistry in order to make a living.
10) WFB: Do you have anything else you would like to share? (websites, contact info, other affiliations)
KS: You can get more information on the amphibians and the many other kinds of animals that we work on from the lab website: www.carleton.ca/~kbstorey as well as links to various media interviews and other sites with information about animal cold hardiness.
Thank you Professor Storey for all the wonderful work you do. Amphibians worldwide are helped by the understanding that has came from the Storey Lab!
