Maureen Donnelly, a professor from Florida International University, spoke to a classroom full of students at Cal State Long Beach about the changes that are affecting amphibians all over the world.
“We asked Donnelly to speak about amphibians because not only did we want to attract biology students, but also non-biology students,” said Melina Juarez, a senior microbiology and chemistry major and the president of the Biology Student Association.
In Donnelly’s presentation, “Amphibian Conservation in the New World Tropics: A Tragedy in Three Acts,” she talked about the research on how amphibians are becoming extinct and what the scientific community is doing to understand the changes.
“For me, this is a selfish act; I like to study tropical organisms and in order for me to do so, there needs to be a tropical forest,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly said the tropics cover one-third of the terrestrial surface and 50 percent of the biodiversity is housed within the tropical belt. 50 million square-km are in Africa, while 30 percent is found in Brazil. Only 5 percent of the rainforest has any protectoral statues.
“If the rate of deforestation continues, we will lose it in 170 years,” Donnelly said.
Deforestation is partly due to developing countries, human population growth and carbon dioxide, which shows an upward trend throughout history.
“All of these of course have impacted on a global factor,” Donnelly said.
The amphibian decline issue was sparked by the incilius periglenes, or “The Golden Toad,” of Monte Verde, Costa Rica.
The frog would emerge during heavy rain seasons and reproduce heavily. There were hundreds of frogs all over the world.
By the time scientists were able to get funds to research the frogs in 1988, they found seven frogs. The next year, they found two, and then there were none, Donnelly said. The golden toad was last seen in 1989.
“If we lose an endemic species that is found and not found anywhere else, that experiment is lost and lost forever,” Donnelly said.
This had scientists talking about the decline they were seeing all over the world of salamanders and frogs, Donnelly said, adding that two-thirds of the living species are under some kind of threat.
Alan Pounds, who researched the Golden Toad, was the first to say that amphibians are going extinct because of climate change. In his published work, he said the extinction of the Golden Toad was caused by drought and the cloud bank moving upward.
“This is proof that science is showing that global warming is a factor that is affecting all sorts of species,” Juarez said.
Caron Lips found a fungus named Chytrid that she found was causing the frogs to die from cardiac arrest. The aquatic fungus lives better at a temperature of 23 degrees Celsius. It was affecting primarily aquatic frogs, but could also be found on wet soil.
“It is one of the most dangerous pathogens, in a biodiversity point of view,” Donnelly said.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an organization that supports scientific research, has been evaluating since 2000 the status of amphibians and is trying to understand what species are impacted by certain factors.
“The threat is not equal across all lineages; some are more susceptible to changes,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly ended by saying that research needs to continue and hopes that education will get future generations to care.
“Conservation is really an interdisciplinary exercise; no single individual does it alone,” Donnelly said.