Müzedeki korunmuş kurbağalar Brezilya’daki amfibi gizemini ölümcül bir mantara bağlıyor

In the 1970s, frog numbers in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a global hotspot of amphibian diversity, fell sharply, and some scientists blamed the 1979–1982 die-offs at the Boracéia Biological Station on climate change or extreme weather. Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and Pennsylvania State University have now reopened this cold case using museum collections. They sampled over 370 preserved specimens of 17 species collected there by a former Smithsonian curator. Frogs gathered before 1979 showed no sign of the chytrid fungus, whereas over half of those from the 1980s were infected, which ties the losses to the pathogen. Surprisingly, the species that declined most had no detectable infection, perhaps because infected frogs died before they could be collected, while stable species were heavily infected yet apparently tolerant. Recent surveys located 12 of the 17 species, and most seem to have recovered, although the results apply only to this site.