Frog sperm quality lower, Yale prof says Yale study: Something in water's affecting amphibians' gender

Geoff Giller, a second year master's student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, recovers a sampling device left in a backyard pond on Kazo Drive in Shelton for the past month measuring the water chemistry Tuesday, August 28, 2012. Giller is looking at pollution in suburban backyard ponds and how it affects frog populations and and deformities in the species. less Geoff Giller, a second year master's student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, recovers a sampling device left in a backyard pond on Kazo Drive in Shelton for the past month measuring the ... more Photo: Autumn Driscoll Photo: Autumn Driscoll Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Frog sperm quality lower, Yale prof says 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

When Yale University ecology professor David K. Skelly took a look at frogs in Connecticut a few years back, he found that the males had what is known as "intersex," or an anatomy that is somewhere between male and female.

Specifically, male frogs were found with eggs in their testes.

"The production of eggs in male frogs is, as far as we can tell, not normal," he said.

On Wednesday, Skelly said it has also been determined that there is an issue with frogs' sperm.

"We have some evidence that sperm from male frogs from suburban environments is of lower quality than it is in more pristine environments," he said.

The frog deformities, researchers say, are caused by a variety of drugs with hormone-like compounds that are seeping into the streams, ponds and vernal pools where frogs and other amphibians live and develop. Many of these compounds resemble estrogen, the female sex hormone.

In recent weeks, Skelly's team has tested water in several small ponds in Fairfield County. He explained that his students are trolling the waters with a cylinder-shaped device that's made of a synthetic membrane designed to absorb pollutants much like living tissues. The cylinder remains submerged for about four weeks.

It was previously thought that these contaminants were either from agricultural chemicals or from people flushing discarded drugs down the toilet. But according to Skelly's research, these related compounds were from the human waste stream. After humans use drugs, they're eventually excreted by the kidneys more or less intact, and find their way into the environment via septic leach fields or through leaks in sanitary sewer pipes.

Skelly plans to publish his paper on both abnormalities -- the low-quality sperm and the male eggs -- in about six months.

"We were able to team up with Larry Barber, a chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey, to do an analysis of the compounds found in the water," Skelly said. "He's one of the top people in that field."

But to do that, Skelly and his team had to ship "many, many gallons of water" to Barber's laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

As for sending the water to Colorado, Skelly said that Federal Express did most of the heavy lifting.

"Actually, a big part of the budget for this kind of work is for shipping water all over the place," he said.

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