Email: adrianne.smits@yale.edu
Lab: Greeley Laboratory, Room 119
Phone: (203) 432-5321
Fax: (203) 432-3929

EDUCATION

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am currently working with David Skelly and Susan Bolden to investigate the relationship between urban proximity and rates of sexual deformity in male green frogs (Rana clamitans). Recent research has linked the pharmaceuticals present in human wastewater, especially estrogenic compounds found in contraceptive pills, with sexual deformities and hermaphroditism in fish and amphibians. That trace concentrations of these compounds fundamentally alter the sexual development of these vertebrate groups is important on a conservation level and as a public health concern. Widely spread amphibians such as green frogs on the east coast of the United States inhabit the same water that is eventually used by humans for drinking and for agriculture; they are therefore an ideal model organism to study the effects of this contamination—a modern ‘canary in a coalmine’. Levels of estrogenic compounds in surface water and groundwater are often higher in urban and suburban areas, and a field study conducted by David Skelly’s lab confirmed that rates of sexual deformity, specifically the presence of eggs developing in the testes of male green frogs, correspond with proximity to urban and suburban land use.

As a follow-up to this preliminary study, I conducted a field study in the Greater Hartford Area of Connecticut during the summer of 2009 to focus specifically on urban and suburban environments. Because the compounds that might be responsible for abnormal sexual development in green frogs probably infiltrate their habitats through leaky sewers and backyard septic systems, I set out to measure the levels of wastewater contamination present in suburban and urban ponds that were also green frog breeding sites. During the next year I will dissect the male frogs I collected this summer to look for testicular oocytes (eggs growing in the testes). All the ponds I visited will be tested for estrogenic compounds, natural and artificial, as well as for herbicides and pesticides. This data will allow me to discern the relationship, if any, between amphibian sexual deformities and contamination of their habitats by chemicals in human wastewater.