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Many of the causes of amphibian declines are well understood, and appear to affect other groups of organisms as well as amphibians. These causes include habitat modification and fragmentation, introduced predators or competitors, introduced species, pollution, pesticide use, or over-harvesting. However, many amphibian declines or extinctions ...
However, many of the causes of amphibian declines are still poorly understood, and the topic is currently a subject of ongoing research. Modeling results found that the current extinction rate of amphibians could be 211 times greater than the background extinction rate. This estimate even goes up to 25,000–45,000 times if endangered species ...
Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment [36] (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation [36]), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species.
Amphibians, particularly anurans (frogs and toads), are increasingly used as bioindicators of contaminant accumulation in pollution studies. [27] Anurans absorb toxic chemicals through their skin and their larval gill membranes and are sensitive to alterations in their environment. [ 28 ]
A recently described second species, B. salamandrivorans, also causes chytridiomycosis and death in salamanders. The fungal pathogens that cause the disease chytridiomycosis are known to damage the skin of frogs, toads, and other amphibians, disrupting their balance of water and salt and eventually causing heart failure, Nature reports. [4]
This would have the opposite effects: expand the area available for tropical species; kill temperate species or force them to migrate towards the poles; possibly cause severe extinctions of polar species; often make the Earth's climate wetter on average, mainly by melting ice and snow and thus increasing the volume of the water cycle. It might ...
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