Frog faces last stand in Panama against killer fungus – ‘Modern equivalent of extinct dinosaurs’
By Sean Mattson
10 June 2011 CERRO SAPO, Panama (Reuters) – The harlequin frog that hops and swims the rocky streams of a damp niche of Toad Mountain in eastern Panama’s dense tropical jungle has probably been on Earth for around 3 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. Known as Atelopus certus, it is among those left on the hit list of the parasitic fungus frog chytrid (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. Believed to be spread by human activity, the fast-acting pathogen has become a symbol of how mankind is contributing to the widespread extinction of species, climate change, and rising sea levels. Conservationists describe the multicolored amphibians as sitting 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. Yet the world may never learn about many of Darien’s rare amphibians, said Joe Mendelson, Zoo Atlanta’s herpetology curator, who describes new species as they fade from the wild. “They are going away sometimes before I even named them,” he said. “I got into this business because I want to work with live animals. And now I’m just working with the modern equivalent of extinct dinosaurs. It’s really unsettling.” …
