Danger of Bacteria Evolving

            The animal kingdom is made up of many components such as mammals, birds etc. but one of the most forgotten animal families is the amphibians, are ectothermic (cold-blooded) family plays a major role in our ecosystems. Amphibians can be separated into three different categories, frogs and toads, newts and salamanders and caecilians.

            What makes amphibians so special compared to other animals is their unique ability to live on both land and water, also the process which they take growing up, from aquatic larvae which use gills to breathe to developing into terrestrials which use their lungs to breathe oxygen. There are exceptions to this though; some salamanders such as the golden alpine salamander (Salamandra atra) which live only on land their whole lives, or the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) which only ever live in the water. Amphibians can vary in size dependant on their species, they can  be as small as 7.7 millimetres long or be as big as 1.8 metres long.

The global status of our amphibian gets drastically worse every year due to a number of causes. One of the main causes is unknown diseases as well as climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, and pollution and of course human influences. Research carried out on the 5,743 amphibian species shows and highlights decline, extinction and some of the possible causes.

In more recent years the discovery of a particular disease known as Chytridiomycosis, has vastly contributed to our amphibian decline. It has many abilities such as eliminating an entire species of amphibians and its ableness to spread to different locations around the world like wild fire.

The image below highlights where worlds amphibian species can be found, as well as how many different species can be found there. Not too surprisingly, there is a vast amount of blue colours showing no more than six species are in these areas.

The Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA) analysed every known species of amphibian and found that out of 1,856, 32% were threatened with extinction. Then analysing all of the species, a further 43% of the species are currently in decline compared to the less than 1% which had actually increased in population size. Shockingly only 23% of the amphibian species population were stable leaving the last percentage of species as unknown.

Amphibians are vital to our ecology, disturbance in the population dynamics affects everything in that area from big things like other animal population dynamics to smaller things such as plants, trees and rocks.

Amphibians are highly sensitive to any and all environmental changes due to a number of factors such as having sensitive skin (permeable). When things such as disease, climate change, or habitat destruction amphibians are affected not only first but the most.

In this diagram you can see the trend patterns of 936 populations of amphibians and how over the years they have steadily declined and fluctuated.

           

This is another diagram highlighting declines in more detail for both North America and Western Europe.

Chytrid Fungus

One of the world’s biggest amphibian killers at the moment is a fungal disease known as

Chytridiomycosis. Chytrid fungus is disease caused by a particular type of fungus; often found in places with water or high moisture. Research so far suggests that it only affects amphibians. However, although the fungus only directly affects amphibians it causes a chain reaction between predators, prey that echo throughout the whole ecosystem. One of the worlds most affected amphibians is the critically endangered is the mountain chicken.

The disease affects the outer layers of the skin, which contain keratin, this is the layer of skin which is meant to resistant to damage. Chrtridiomycosis makes the skin become tougher and thicker, this makes it difficult to absorb water and salts through the skin which in turn cause not to receive the required amount of oxygen. The final result is death by suffocation. The disease can be recognised by its symptoms;

·         Reddening

·         Discoloured skin

·         Shedding increase

·         Abnormal behaviour

·         Seizures

·         Nocturnal animal becoming diurnal

One of the problems scientists diagnosing the disease is that the symptoms overlap with other amphibian diseases. Fortunately captive kept amphibians can be treated with antifungal treatments and full enclosure disinfection, so far there are no ways of treating wild none captive populations.

In Montserrat and Dominica a Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme was put in place the restore the population of this particular breed of frog. They work with European conservation institutions the country governments to try and prevent the frogs from extinction. They manage to breed, restore and research the frogs in order to prevent further extinction of damage to the ecosystem.

In 2009 when Montserrat discovered that the area was infected by the disease they launched a rescue mission where they removed 50 healthy samples of the mountain chicken frog and placed them into captivity to begin their research and bio-secure breeding programme.

Nationally our own amphibians are in decline, for example the Natter jack toad which lives in a variety of habitats such as coastal dunes, upper saltmarshes and lowland heaths. The chytrid fungus is one of the main causes yet again for the decline but also habitat destruction and the

 naturally changing climate altering out British seasons play a major role.

To preserve the toad action is being taken to preserve the sand dunes by restoring them and creating new habitats such as the yellow-dune habitats. This is when they place new substrates and environmental attributes to replace where the natural habitat has been eroded. They try to prevent beach cleaning operations and prevent the natural process of land formation.

Not only are they maintained and creating the dunes for the Natter jack toads but they are also doing it for the pools. This involves pH maintenance, putting in basins to prevent natural erosions which could remove the pools from the habitat. The creation of pools for the toads encourages breeding and population as they replace the old ones and provide safer and more distribution.