Published by
Mongabay
Mongabay
By Suzana Camargo At a conference on herpetology — the branch of zoology studying reptiles and amphibians — at the end of the 1980s, researchers from numerous countries began to tell of disappearing and shrinking frog and toad populations. It was found not to be an isolated situation: the same phenomenon was happening in many forests and mountains across the American continent. After a number of analyses, the scientists found that thousands of amphibians were becoming victim to a lethal fungus originating in Asia called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, which causes a disease called chytr…