Ask An Entomologist: Invasives
October 8th, 2006 by Kelley
Dee asks:
Ok Kelley - what do we do about our frog epidemic on the Big Island of Hawaii? You and Josh will have to come over and research.
Well, I don’t do frogs, haha, so the only advice I can give about the epidemic (invasive and very problematic) frog problem on Hawaii is to dedicate as much time as you have to kissing all of the frogs and turning them into princes. At least then you can easily spot and detect all the alien princes (by their crowns, duh) and deport them.
Either way, Josh and I would be eager to hop a flight and look into this problem, espically if you will have your fridge stocked before we come. Maybe this could coincide with our honeymoon?? 
I take it that I’m not the Josh being discussed here. I already got to live on the Big Island for about half a year, plus went back to Hawai’i for some of my dissertation work. Not that I wouldn’t love to go back!
The frogs over there were some Caribbean species of Eleutherodactylids, including the Coqui from Puerto Rico. Not causing any ecological problems when last I checked; they mostly lived in areas where native Hawaiian fauna was pretty well wiped out. So the only problem was the noise. I also seem to recall that the part of the Big Island where they lived was famous for growing, ahem, agricultural crops which allowed one to sleep through just about anything…
Good news is, Hawai’i has no native amphibians (and almost no mammals or reptiles either). So if you could find an amphibian-specific pathogen, say the fungus that allegedly wiped out the Golden Toad, the Gastric-breeding Frog, and various other anurans worldwide, you could probably use it over there without much fear of unintended consequences. Much safer than using fish or snakes, which would probably decide that the endemic Hawaiian fish and insects tasted better than the exotic treefrogs. But I don’t think that fungus has been cultured for commercial use yet.
Cheers,
Josh