[Guest]

At my high school every senior has to do a senior project at the end of the year. We have to do a project with a mentor for at least 15 hours and write a 10-15 page research paper on a related topic. I want to do my project on building a new viv that is as self contained as I can make it. The problem is I can’t come up with a really interesting topic for my paper. The ideas I came up with so far are the history of frogs, the conservation efforts of the rainforest, and using amphibians as an indicator species for global problems. The problem is none of these are THAT exciting. I know there must be some awesome ideas out there, I just haven’t thought of them yet. Do any of you guys have suggestions?

 

[bbrock]

If you ask me, one of the most interesting PDF research topics going right now are the new findings in the source of toxins. In particular, the latest paper in PNAS that may have found the source for the granddaddy of the toxins, batrachiotoxin, by talking to natives in New Guinea who pointed them to a little beetle that apparently is the source for the poisonous birds in the area. The birds were only discovered as having toxic feathers to science in the 1990s and the toxin just so happens to be the same chemical found in the Phyllobates. This story has it all. Parallel evolution, deadly toxins, the only known toxic birds, ethnobiology, and one heck of a nice detective story.