Behavioral Ecology Blog

So anybody that has NOT living inside a bubble for the last few days has heard about the planned Amphibian Ark. It has received extensive media/blog coverage, for example:

LA Times
NY Times
USA Today
AP Coverage
At ScienceBlogs-Commonground

Anyway, you get the picture… A whole mess of Amphibians are bring killed by the emerging infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. This is really serious, the fungus spreads really fast, and kills most everything in it’s path. It has the potential to drive many many amphibian species to the brink of extinction.

What should we do about it? Well clearly the 1st priority should be basic science. We should pour money into research programs specifically designed to identify the critical epidemiological parameters including host-parasite interactions, transmission dynamics, fungus biology, etc. Much lower priority should be the collection and maintenance of small collections of live animals. While this might buffer species from extinction in the short run- this is not a long term solution! (I.e. thinking about low genetic diversity secondary to small effective population size)

What the AZA and WAZA propose however (I think) is to Keep animals in captivity, eradicate chytrid, then reintroduce… But WAIT, It seems totally unlikely that chytrid fungus will be eradicated in the foreseeable future, especially given there are still amphibian species in those habitats (the common non-threatened species) to maintain the chytrid. Diseases like this don’t go away.. Think of human infectious disease- after billions of dollars and decades of research we have eradicated….. hmmmm….. NO INFECTIOUS DISEASE.

Overall, it seems as if this idea is not very well thought out.. But then again, maybe I am missing something.