It's six-thirty in the morning in the not-so-sleepy Atlanta suburb of Dallas, Georgia, and biologist Sean Graham is standing in the bed of his pickup, barking out rules.

"You have from seven this morning to seven at night to find as many species as possible! Report back at dark." With a twinkle of mischief in his eye, he concludes, "Cheating is entirely acceptable."

Sean is laying down the ground rules to our ragtag group of herpetologists, all standing in a semicircle in the parking lot of a Sonic Drive-In. The whole scene looks like some kind of off-kilter, khaki-clad political rally. We've descended on Dallas for a bioblitz: a term scientists have coined for a rapid, all-encompassing inventory of a region's biodiversity. Put simply, the goal of a bioblitz is to find and identify as many species as possible within a set time limit, often in just one to two days. Sean's bioblitz has gathered groups of herpetologists from three southeastern universities to catalog the reptiles and amphibians of the Atlanta suburbs - a daunting task, even for trained professionals.

The reason we all seem so intimidated is that, simply, most biologists avoid the wilds of suburbia like the plague. After all, working in the field needs public land - and lots of it. And in the time it's taken metro Atlanta to morph from a Norman Rockwell painting into a monochromatic mosaic of taupe stucco, the region has lost much of its sense of place, and along with it, its open spaces.  On our drive into Dallas, for example, I counted four supermarkets in just the two short miles from the interstate to our rally point. Another is being built just down the road.

But there's a method to Sean's madness, and it's centered in the fact that, for the last two decades, hardly anyone has prowled the woodlands of suburban Atlanta and recorded what they've found. The range maps of several of the South's amphibian species, the kinds published in field guides, show glaring holes over the city. Without a basic knowledge of where animals live, it's impossible to understand how they've evolved, discover how they interact, or, more importantly, make strides to protect them. Believe it or not, the patchwork menagerie of subdivisions and strip malls laid out before us may very well represent a treasure trove of diversity.

After Sean's speech, I team up with Carlos, a biologist at Georgia's Piedmont College, and Val and Beth, two graduate students from Auburn University. Together we drive in Carlos's pickup towards Raccoon Creek, a state-protected patch of undeveloped land just outside town. The drive narrows from a bustling four-lane highway, to a weatherbeaten county road that encircles a wealthy subdivision, and finally to a rutted dirt road, where we park and descend into a scraggled second-growth woods.

 It isn't long before Beth hits paydirt.

 "Come here!" she screams, crouched over a lime-green bed of sphagnum moss. "It's a brachyphona!" In her hand is a Pseudacris brachyphona, or Mountain Chorus Frog, an olive, bullet-shaped frog no bigger than my thumbnail. If it hadn't been for its high-pitch trill of a call, we likely would have never noticed it.

How do we conserve what we don't even know exists?  And what happens if we never take the steps to discover it in the first place? The possibilities are frightening. Sprawl is enveloping in the South and other parts of the nation at an alarming rate, with little signs of slowing. The county where I was born, perched on the northeast side of Atlanta, has set aside less than 1 percent of its land for conservation in its twenty year growth plan. Without habitat to support them, many of the creatures that use this open land may disappear with it, and along with them could go part of our natural heritage.

For the moment, though, the tiny chorus frog is safe on Raccoon Creek, and it sits patiently on the moss while we take a few photos and record its measurements. The frog is a county record and will result in a significant extension of the species' range. With enough time and effort, there's a chance that a few more of the suburbs' secrets will be found and, somehow, protected. The trick lies in finding them in the first place.

The chorus frog seems to agree. It quickly disappears into the undergrowth and begins calling again, despite the rattle of the big-rig gearing down somewhere in the distance. Wildness, it seems, lies in the eye of the beholder.