1/13/2024 0 Comments Save the frogs ad![]() In 20, Griffith and his team rushed to collect hundreds of frogs, representing a dozen species. “We knew the fungus would be here, we saw it coming, and we knew we had to do something,” said Edgardo Griffith, a founder of the center, who sports a tattoo of a golden frog on his calf. In a pretty resort town nestled in the bottom of a volcanic caldera is El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center, known as EVACC, the original Amphibian Ark, supported by the Houston Zoo. Studies published in recent months suggest the Bd fungus itself might be evolving, creating a more deadly “superbug.” Researchers have also found that the more variable the temperature, attributed to climate change, the more lethal the fungus. The clawed frog carries the fungus but does not get sick. The fungus may have been spread by the international trade in African clawed frogs, a popular laboratory animal and pet, which was used for pregnancy tests (urine from pregnant women would induce the frog to produce eggs). Ibanez said the spread of the fungus may have been helped, like other emerging diseases, such as swine flu and AIDS, by globalization. “It kills some species, infects others, who serve as disease vectors, as carriers, so it doesn’t go away.” “Usually when Bd appears, it kills everything it is going to kill, and quickly,” said Roberto Ibanez of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. The contributing causes may include climate change and increased ultraviolet radiation, but one thing is certain: The Bd fungus is wiping out frogs. Yet frogs vanished from pristine habitats like those in Panama, where the trees still harbor howler monkeys and pygmy sloths. Many were victims of habitat change, introduced predators, pollution, pesticides or over-harvesting by collectors. Scientists began to document a worldwide decline of amphibians in the 1980s. ![]() In Panama, famous for its biological diversity, the country’s mascot, the golden frog, has not been seen in the wild since 2008. Scientists calculate that more than a third, and as much as two-thirds, of all frog species in Latin America are at risk. ![]() The last time Richards-Zawacki was in this spot, in 2004, she remembers counting 15 golden frogs in two hours, and a number of other diurnal species.īecause Panamanian golden frogs are known as “explosive breeders,” a few times a year one could see them congregate by the hundreds at water’s edge to copulate. In rubber boots, carrying a backpack filled with gear to weigh, measure and swab for fungal infection any frog she finds, Richards-Zawacki slogged a few hundred meters down a narrow gorge of the Rio Farallon, peering at the banks covered in moss and fern, water dripping from springs and waterfalls. “This sure is depressing,” said Cori Richards-Zawacki, a professor from Tulane University who has logged months in the field here. In Panama, scientists are returning to sites where just a few years ago they observed frogs in abundance. And they might not be coming back, unless scientists in extinction hot spots such as Panama succeed in their audacious bid to breed the rarest of the rare in captivity in amphibian arks. Where there was once a crazy cacophony of frog song, all day, all night, there is now a spooky quiet. In the pristine tropical forests of the world, the waters still run clear and clean, and the jungle is, as ever, a riot of green, grasping life. The little victims? Their pores clog, and they die of a heart attack. It is like a cheesy horror movie, but real. The villain is a rather extraordinary fungus, an amphibian version of a case of athlete’s foot from hell, with an impossible name, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which scientists call “Bd,” a virulent, lethal fungus that has spread around the globe. ![]() Central American countries such as Panama are suffering a catastrophic decline. In what may be the greatest disease-driven loss of biodiversity in recorded history, hundreds of frog species around the world are facing extinction.įar from being obscure, many of the frogs threatened at the checkout counter are Class A Number One amphibians - the kinds of jewel-colored frogs that adorn postage stamps and Smithsonian calendars and that biologists consider to be keystone species in their environments, no less important than otters or coral or bees, in their way.įrogs in the western United States are threatened, and Australia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean have been especially hard hit. Because the thing that is killing the frogs is still out there.
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