UCF researcher hunts down frogs to help them live
(AP) — It is a good night for the amphibian researcher with the green-tinted hair and frog and snake tattoos on her right thigh.
Two hours earlier, rain had pounded Central Florida, so the chirping frogs are now in full force in the muddy water at twilight.
About three times a month, the Titusville native yanks on her knee-high galoshes and straps a light on her head to catch frogs, a childhood pastime she relives as an adult.
Frogs play a role as both prey and predator in the ecosystem, Horner said, adding, "If you take that piece out of the food chain, you have a potential collapse."
On July 5, Horner rounds up four UCF undergraduate biology students who don't mind ruining their shoes in the mud.
After they catch 20 animals, they record their sex and length and cut off the longest toe on the back foot — Horner says it will grow back — to test later if there is Chytrid fungus in the tissue.
Not far from her campus biology lab, Horner shares a house with two roommates, plus her collection of rescued snakes, turtles, a lizard, a salamander, several kinds of frogs, an orange and green parrot and a poodle named Harvey.