Catastrophic loss of amphibian biodiversity
/Scientists Uncover the Most Devastating Disease-Afflicted Biodiversity Loss Known to Science
A recent paper published in Science revealed the shocking results of a global disease transmission assessment: A fungal disease affecting amphibians has been identified as the most devastating recorded example of biodiversity loss attributable to a single disease. The analysis was made possible by an extensive collaboration involving experts from 36 institutions.
Over the past half century, the amphibian chytridiomycosis panzootic, an infectious disease that affects amphibians worldwide, has resulted in 90 presumed extinctions as well as the decline of at least 501 amphibian species.
This fungus was identified in amphibian populations about 20 years ago as the cause of death and species extinction at a global scale. The last similar analysis that assessed global amphibian decline was published in 2007 but was mainly focused on the regions that suffered the most decline.
One of the two Cornell affiliates in the study, Prof. Kelly Zamudio, ecology and evolutionary biology, has worked in Panama, Brazil and the United States studying the effect of frog-killing chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis using population genetics.
Zamudio said the idea for the global epidemiological analysis started from a conversation going around the amphibians researcher community: “How bad is this? How much have we really lost?”
