- Title: PANAMA: Panamanian harlequin frog in last stand against killer fungus
- Date: 6th July 2011
- Summary: CERRO SAPO, DARIEN, PANAMA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BIOLOGISTS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE CROSSING RIVER BIOLOGIST TAKING SAMPLE OF WATER TO CHECK FOR LETHAL FUNGUS BIOLOGIST JOTTING DOWN DATA BIOLOGISTS STANDING NEXT TO WATERFALL BIOLOGISTS COLLECTING TOAD MOUNTAIN HARLEQUIN FROG FROM TREE TRUNK AND PLACING INTO PLASTIC BAG FOR WEIGHING AN
- Embargoed: 21st July 2011 03:19
- Keywords:
- Location: Panama, Panama
- Country: Panama
- Topics: Nature / Environment
- Reuters ID: LVA3P8C5OCXUXOY0VKY3W3PZQJG3
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Story Text: The latest frog-finding expedition by scientists from Panama's Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute confirmed what they had long feared - the Toad Mountain Harlequin Frog, known as Atelopus certus, is harder than ever to find.
The harlequin frog inhabits the rocky streams of a damp niche of Toad Mountain in eastern Panama's dense tropical jungle and has probably been on Earth for around three million years. Within a few more years, the black-spotted orange-and-white amphibian with dazzling green-tinged eyes is likely to be wiped off the map by a deadly fungus, scientists say.
The frog is in decline, thanks to the parasitic chyrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) which has helped to hasten the decline or extinction of 200 species from California's Sierra Nevada to Australia and could threaten hundreds more.
Frog chytrid was described in 1998, as separate groups of scientists in the United States, Australia and Central America pooled research on frog declines and identified it as the culprit. The fungus kills by causing a skin infection that hampers an amphibian's vital functions, leading to cardiac arrest. How chytrid spread is unclear, though trade in exotic frogs and the introduction of African species have been suggested. During the 1950s, African clawed frogs were bred and exported in their thousands after proving to be a reliable pregancy-testing vehicle for humans. Women who thought they might be pregnant would have their urine injected into the frog. If the frog began to ovulate as a result, the woman could be reasonably sure she was pregnant. Most scientists believe the frogs destined for export were infected with the fungus and spread it to other species wherever they were sent. They say the ongoing international trade of amphibians has exacerbated the problem.
Conservationists in Panama say the harlequins are on the cusp of oblivion and efforts to save them and other unidentified species are converging on Panama's Darien, one of the last places still partly free from the fungus.
Worldwide, more than 40 percent of amphibians are in decline from habitat loss, pollution and the fungal plague. Many scientists believe the amphibian plight is a bellwether for the changing planet's eventual impact on flora and fauna.
The speed of the chytrid threat is making scientists who describe living animals feel like paleontologists, as signs increase that this new geological age is occurring in a fraction of the time they did in the past. The remote and dangerous Darien is one of the battlegrounds as scientists like Robert Ibanez, try to stop, or at least slow, the demise of species.
"There is little time left, a few years at the most. If we don't rescue them (frogs) soon, we won't have any left to rescue, it would be difficult to find them. We base our experience on what has happened in western Panama." said Ibanez, who estimates Toad Mountain will remain chytrid-free for three years at best.
Ibanez says the world may never learn about many of Darien's rare amphibians.
"Darien is an area which has not been well explored. We know from our first visits to the area, there are a lot of species which have not been documented. Apart from those we already know about, which are numerous in some cases, but if the fungus infects the area it will wipe out species we don't even know about."
Ibanez, of Panama's Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, was among the first amphibian experts to go to Toad Mountain in three decades, and he reckons as many as 40 species remain in Panama that could be susceptible to chytrid.
"This is a pretty ambitious project that covers a lot and needs a lot of effort and funds in order for progress to be made. We keep four to five species in the lab but some 30 to 40 species need to be saved in Panama," added Ibanez, whose team was halted for hours by police en route to Cerro Sapo, characteristic of the unpredictable security in the region.
Large swaths of the province are off-limits as Colombian rebels-turned-drug traffickers stalk the remote, sparsely populated area on the Colombian border.
Every effort is being made to safe them.
Biologist Angie Estrada, who helps to run a captive conservation programme says they are successfully breeding captive frogs.
"We have successfully bred two couples. The last time we counted we had 215 babies which is a lot and what we're doing seems to be working and the second couple have laid eggs so in a couple of months we'll have maybe 500 babies." she said.
Many experts are gloomy about stopping chytrid's advance, though hope may lie in California's Sierra Nevada, where an effort to inoculate the frogs is underway.
However, Panama's frogs have proved resistant to his bacteria. Finding a different chytrid-fighting bacteria native to Panama's frogs may provide the key.
Climate change has long been suspected in the chytrid spread but no clear link between the two has yet been made. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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