An Alaska wood frog creates a hibernaculum from duff and leaf litter in a spruce forest on the Fairbanks campus in preparation for the long winter freeze.Repeated freezing and thawing might not be good for the average steak, but each fall it might help wood frogs prepare to survive Alaska’s winter cold.“Alaska wood frogs spend more time freezing and thawing outside than a steak does in your freezer, and the frog comes back to life in the spring in better shape than the steak,” said Don Larson, University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student and lead author on a recent paper demonstrating that freeze tolerance in Alaska wood frogs is more extreme than previously thought.
Although wood frogs are well-studied freeze-tolerant amphibians, Larson’s research is believed to be the first to examine the frogs under natural conditions.
