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| ©Vance Vredenburg |
| Carcasses of Southern Yellow-legged Frogs in Sixty Lake Basin in Sierra Nevada, California. The frogs died of chytridiomycosis, an amphibian disease caused by a particularly virulent fungus. |
Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.
In an article published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers argue that substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet.
"There's no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now," said David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us."
