Leaps and bounds
OU scientist helps highlight frogs with 3-D technology
NORMAN — A 3-D collection of invasive, rare and endangered frogs now is available to anyone, anywhere, thanks to the collaboration of scientists across the United States, including at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
Cameron Siler, assistant curator of herpetology and assistant professor of biology at the University of Oklahoma, joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Zoo Atlanta and the Amphibian Foundation to unveil a set of 15 3-D models of live frogs, including several endangered species.
“Frogs of the World” is designed to promote conservation, education and science by showcasing the amphibians’ beauty and vulnerability to ecological threats.
“Researchers can no longer collect some of these threatened species to study, and some you rarely see in the wild,” Siler said.
“Having a true-tolife model that includes all the animal’s details, showing it in its living state, opens up a lot of neat ways that we as a museum can increase the breadth of our impact on conservation and biodiversity education.”
At the Sam Noble museum, herpetology specimens are stored in fluid to preserve them; but time does take its toll, Siler said. Some specimens lose their coloration and shape, or become brittle.
3-D collections, on the other hand, are unchanging. At digital life3d.org, anyone can examine the live frogs by magnifying the images to see the vibrant colors in the frogs’ skin and turn the frog around to view it from every angle.
“You see everything from skin texture to coloration to eye color, and those are actually diagnostic features that might lead to other insights about how species interact with the environment, how they communicate, or how they attract mates,” Siler said.
The collection, which was unveiled recently, represents the first-ever use of 3-D technology to preserve accurate, high-resolution models of some of the most endangered frog species on the planet, said Duncan Irschick, who leads the Digital Life team at UMass Amherst.
Irschick and his team hope that making 3-D models of living animals will promote conservation, science and research and increase public awareness, not only for endangered species but for more common ones that are crucial to ecosystems around the world.
Siler hopes to incorporate the 3-D models and 3-D technology in the museum, the OU Department of Biology and his ongoing biodiversity efforts in Oklahoma and Southeast Asia. This summer, he’ll lead Irschick and a team of researchers on an expedition to the Philippines, where they’ll use Beastcam MACRO technology on its first international test in the field. That National Science Foundation-funded expedition will result in more 3-D models for the “Frogs of the World” collection.