Where Have All The Frogs Gone? New Study Illuminates Killer Fungus
Frogs in Peril Joel Sartore More than 80 percent of the world's sharp snouted day frogs died off in the decade leading up to 2004. In 2002, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed the little frog species with a wedge shaped snout on its Red List of critically endangered species. Its hopping grounds were at the fringes of the rainforest and in the uplands of Australia. Until they weren't. A 2006 study suggested the sharp snouted day frog's situation was "the first case of extinction by infection of a free-ranging wildlife species from which it did not recover." The deadly disease is chytridiomycosis, caused by the chyrid fungus, known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. For something that's so pervasive and effective at killing off species, scientists know surprisingly little. And the sharp snouted day frog...