Authors

Source

Type

Peer Review

Audience

Pages

Notes

Beginning in the late 1980s, an especially prominent example of a global loss of biodiversity came to light as herpetologists reported amphibians had gone missing within protected parks and reserves. Since then research has shown that modern amphibian declines and extinctions have no precedent in any animal class over the last few millennia (Stuart Et al. 2004). About 32% of some 6000 amphibian species are threatened as compared to12% of bird and 23% of mammal species. Up to 122 amphibian species may be extinct since 1980, and population size is declining in at least 43% of species. In the last decades of the 20th century the amphibian extinction rate exceeded the mean extinction rate of the last 350 million years by at least 200 times (Roelants et al. 2007). Recent amphibian declines are an opportunity to study the causes of extinction in recent, not ancient, populations.
Amphibian losses have engendered research and conservation programs, and a general call to prevent more species declines and extinctions in this vertebrate class (Mendelson et al. 2006). Responding will require a novel, and cross-disciplinary initiative such as the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan or ACAP.