Influence of Oviposition-Inducing Hormone on Spawning and Mortality in the Endangered Panamanian Golden Frog (Atelopus zeteki)

ORCID

CKouba: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8466-6077

MSU Affiliation

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology; College of Forest Resources; Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture

Creation Date

2026-10-30

Abstract

Background: With Panamanian golden frogs (Atelopus zeteki; PGFs) likely extirpated from the wild, ensuring long-term sustainability of captive populations is crucial in order to conserve this critically endangered species. Unfortunately, PGFs display a unique reproductive behavior involving a prolonged period of amplexus leading to challenges in their successful captive propagation. The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore has observed high levels of mortality during the breeding season and suboptimal reproductive success leading to the use of hormone stimulation to aid in reproduction and health management. Methods: This project aimed to develop induced ovulation and health management protocols by (1) evaluating different doses of gonadotropin releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa), (2) comparing the efficacy of GnRHa and GnRHa + metoclopramide, (3) determining latency periods and the effects of pulsed hormone sequences; and (4) establish if mortality is impacted by hormone therapy. Female PGFs (n = 174) were given GnRHa either in various concentrations (Experiment 1) or combined with metoclopramide (Experiment 2), and oviposition success, latency, and mortality were measured as binary response variables. Results: Overall, the use of exogenous hormones significantly decreased mortality when compared to the control data of natural egg-laying females. GnRHa doses of 0.05 μg/g body weight produced similar ovulation rates compared to higher doses, and the addition of metoclopramide did not increase oviposition success compared to GnRHa alone. Lastly, results indicate the majority of female PGFs will release eggs within 48 h following the initial pulse of hormones with a small percentage ovipositing after a second pulse. Conclusion: Findings from this study will benefit captive management of PGFs by documenting the increased survival of females when given hormone stimulation and defining appropriate GnRHa doses and expected latency to spawning.

Keywords

anuran reproduction, dopamine agonist, dystocia, GnRHa, hormone pulsing, metoclopramide, priming, spawning

Publication Date

5-22-2021

Publication Title

BMC Zoology

Publisher

BioMed Central

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40850-021-00076-8