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posted by martyb on Friday March 29 2019, @09:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.

Scientists first noticed in the 1970s that some frog populations were declining quickly; by the 1980s, some species appeared to be extinct. The losses were puzzling, because the frogs were living in pristine habitats, unharmed by pollution or deforestation.

In the late 1990s, researchers discovered that frogs in both Australia and Panama were infected with a deadly fungus, which they named Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis — Bd, for short.

The fungus turned up in other countries, but studies of its DNA suggest that Bd originated on the Korean Peninsula. In Asia, amphibians seem impervious to Bd, but when it got to other parts of the world — probably via the international trade in pet amphibians — the pathogen reached hundreds of vulnerable species.

Amphibians are infected with Bd by contact with other animals or by spores floating in the water. The fungus invades skin cells and multiplies. An infected frog’s skin will start to peel away as the animal grows sluggish. Before it dies, a frog may manage to hop its way to a new stream or pond, spreading the fungus further.

In 2007, researchers speculated that Bd might be responsible for all known declines of frogs that had no other apparent cause — about 200 species. For the most part, however, scientists studied Bd at the local level, looking at its impacts on particular species in particular places.

[...]On Thursday, 41 scientists published the first worldwide analysis of a fungal outbreak that’s been wiping out frogs for decades. The devastation turns out to be far worse than anyone had previously realized.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers conclude that populations of more than 500 species of amphibians have declined significantly because of the outbreak — including at least 90 species presumed to have gone extinct. The figure is more than twice as large as earlier estimates.

Story https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.html
Original article http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6434/1459


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @12:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @12:25PM (#821751)

    Problem is that this will wipe out all of the other frogs too :(