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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 ...
As of December 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 673 critically endangered amphibian species, including 146 which are tagged as possibly extinct. [1] [2] 9.2% of all evaluated amphibian species are listed as critically endangered. No subpopulations of amphibians have been evaluated by the IUCN.
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 ...
A 2013 study estimated that 670–933 amphibian species (11–15%) are both highly vulnerable to climate change while already being on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. A further 698–1,807 (11–29%) amphibian species are not currently threatened, but could become threatened in the future due to their high vulnerability to climate change.
The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) [41] but this is a great deal smaller than the largest amphibian that ever existed—the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus, a crocodile-like temnospondyl dating to 270 million years ago from the middle Permian of Brazil. [42]
The population of the mountain chicken frog, once abundant in the Caribbean, has dropped by over 99% in 20 years due to a deadly fungal disease.
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]
Most amphibian species are also threatened by native habitat loss, [41] and some species are now only breeding in modified habitat. [42] Endemic organisms with limited ranges are most affected by habitat destruction, mainly because these organisms are not found anywhere else in the world, and thus have less chance of recovering.