Global Warming Hits Earth's Frog Population
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area of Costa Rica and is threatening to make extinct more than
one-hundred species of frogs in the same toad family in the region,
according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Scientists
say it appears global warming has given rise to a toxic fungus that is
wiping out the frogs in a very short period of time.
Seventeen years ago, in Costa Rica's mountainous Monteverde Forest
region, the tiny, brightly-colored red, black and yellow harlequin frog
could be spotted everywhere on rocks along streams. The golden toad,
another frog in the same family, was also abundant, according to Alan
Pounds, an ecologist with the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa
Rica.
"In 1987, there were maybe one-thousand-five-hundred golden toads
observed at the principal known breeding site. But then the next year,
only a single male appeared there. And in the same year, harlequin
frogs, which were so abundant along some of the streams that you had to
be careful not to step on them, went to being virtually absent. And
then after that, we haven't seen them," he said.
Investigators say the cause of the extinction, and 67 percent reduction
of the family of toads that includes the harlequin and golden frogs,
was a point-one-eight-percent increase in temperature each decade since
1975.
Drawing on an extensive database produced by 75 researchers, scientists
found a clear relationship between the number of frogs deaths and
temperature increase, with the most amphibians disappearing in the
warmest years.
During those years, Mr. Pounds say it appears a fungus, which normally
lives harmlessly on the frogs' skin, became toxic and kills the
amphibians. Under normal circumstances, the fungus is kept in check by
the temperature extremes of the mountainous tropical forest regions.
But milder temperatures, brought about by such factors as
deforestation, have caused the deadly fungus to thrive, leading to the
frogs' demise. "So the disease is the bullet killing frogs. The climate
is pulling the triggers," he said.
As further proof that global warming is adversely affecting the frogs,
Mr. Pounds says there are no extinctions of harlequin frogs in the
lowlands where it is warm all the time.
Mr. Pounds says the study provides proof that global warming is
creating disease where none existed and that should raise concern. "You
can't keep changing ecosystems and expect our own life support system
to be viable. So, you have to take notice and do something about it,"
he said.
Researchers believe similar extinction processes are under way in other
parts of the world, and there are efforts to identify them and their
causes.
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