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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 ...
Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time (i.e., less than 2 million years). [18] [51] The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian extinction, the Permian–Triassic extinction ...
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 ...
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.
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]
[4] [5] [9] These regions, which include the Brazilian Amazon, the Congo Basin of Central Africa, and Indonesia, experience the greatest rates of overexploitation and habitat degradation. [8] However, specific causes are varied, and areas with one endangered group (such as birds) do not necessarily also have other endangered groups (such as ...
According to 2018 research, Madagascar would lose 60% of its species under 4.5 °C (8.1 °F), while Fynbos in Western Cape region of South Africa would lose a third of its species. Miombo Woodlands of South Africa would lose around 90% of their amphibians and about 86% of their birds if the warming were to reach 4.5 °C (8.1 °F). [1]
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]