Kent Gilbert/Associated Press
When JJ Apodaca entered graduate school in biology in 2004, a first-of-its-kind study assessing the status of the world’s least understood vertebrates had just been published. The first Global Amphibian Assessment, which surveyed more than 5,700 species of frogs, toads, salamanders, newts and other amphibians, “guided my career,” says Scott, now president of the nonprofit Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy. Apodaca said.
Nineteen years later, the second global assessment of the world’s amphibians has been completed.
“This is a fist pump,” said Apodaca, who was not involved in the study but reviewed the results. “Nineteen years later, the situation is not getting better, it’s getting worse.”
Evaluations published in magazines Nature, on Wednesday, examined 20 years of data from more than 1,000 scientists around the world. Jennifer Luedtke, one of the study’s lead authors, said the study assessed the status of “94 percent” of nearly all known amphibians on Earth. However, she noted that an average of 155 new amphibians are discovered each year.
Whether discovered or not, the study found that the status of amphibians is “rapidly deteriorating” globally, calling them some of the most endangered vertebrates on Earth. He has been given an enviable title.
Forty-one percent of assessed amphibians are at risk of extinction in the short and long term, Lutke said. “This is a higher rate than for mammals, reptiles, and birds that are at risk of extinction.”
Habitat loss due to agriculture, logging, and other human encroachments was the biggest factor in the deterioration. As in 2004, diseases such as chytrid fungus were also a major threat.
But scientists were shocked to discover that climate change is emerging as one of the biggest threats to amphibians around the world. Between 2004 and 2022, the period examined in the new assessment, 39% of species approached extinction due to the effects of climate change, Lutke said. “And in the previous 20 years, it was only 1 percent.”
As the burning of fossil fuels raises global temperatures, the duration and frequency of droughts is increasing. Seasons change. Precipitation patterns are changing. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, and wildfires are becoming more common.
And amphibians are especially vulnerable to environmental changes. Many rely on water for reproduction. They are cold-blooded animals, so they are sensitive to slight temperature changes.
“Their skin has no protection,” says Patricia Burrows, a biology professor at the University of Puerto Rico. “They have no feathers, no fur, and no scales.”
Scientists have recorded many species moving to new locations or retreating to higher elevations as temperatures change. Burroughs studies forest jobs, Eleutherodactylus portoricensis, an endangered small yellow or tan frog that lives in the mountains of Puerto Rico. This frog had been observed to migrate to higher elevations, although some species of similar Puerto Rican frogs did not. Burrows and his graduate students discovered that certain forest carp, already endangered, are on the move and are more sensitive to small changes in temperature.
“Patterns are no longer predictable,” Burrows said.
A new assessment finds salamanders and newts are most at risk. The world’s highest concentration of salamander diversity is in the southeastern United States and southern Appalachia, where Apodaca, executive director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, works and lives.
“This is not just a problem of species going extinct in the Global South, Australia, Central America, etc.,” he says. “This is the story of things that are decaying and at risk right here in our backyard. So it’s our responsibility and our duty to save these things.”