A king penguin standing out starkly from the crowd took the top prize in the British Ecological Society’s “Capturing Ecology” photo competition this year. Chris Oosthuizen of South Africa’s University…
In my lifetime, global wildlife populations have seen an overall decline of more than half. That’s a statement of such enormity that it’s hard to process. The evidence comes from…
A new map plots out the last known refuges of hundreds of highly threatened species around the world. The assessment updates work done by the Alliance for Zero Extinction, or…
Frogs are incredible creatures. Usually born in water, most live the first stages of their life essentially as a fish, before undergoing a radical metamorphosis that transforms them into an…
New findings indicate that at current deforestation rates, all of Haiti’s primary forest will be gone within the next two decades, leading to the loss of most of the country’s…
If it happens, it’ll likely go something like this: American parents decide to buy something special for their child’s birthday – a pet salamander. Although immediately excited, the child quickly loses…
On this episode, we discuss the global outbreak of the chytrid fungus, which might have already driven as many as 200 species of frogs to extinction, but there have been…
Chief Antonio Manquid Jiménez, an elder and shaman of the Matsés tribe of northeastern Peru, hasn’t always used a smartphone to document what he finds during his hunting and gathering…
Frogs in a tropical forest in Panama are doing better than scientists believed after a devastating fungus slashed population numbers and wiped out entire species about a decade ago. In…
It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack — except the needle is invisible and the hay stretches for thousands of miles. Oh, and there may not actually be…
Exotic pets that grow to be big adults and are inexpensive to buy are more likely to end up in the wild, according to a recent study. “It is difficult…
In 2016, a group of researchers set out to explore Serra da Neve Inselberg, an isolated mountain and Angola’s second-highest peak, in search of frogs and toads. Now, they have described…
A researcher has identified a colorful tree frog as a new species and named the amphibian Sylvia’s tree frog, Cruziohyla sylviae, after his 3-year-old granddaughter. Andrew Gray, Curator of Herpetology…
Local and indigenous communities seem to hold the key to protecting both forests and the massive amounts of carbon that they contain — and on which we all depend. But…
Peru has lost much of its dry forest in recent years, to the extent that only around 5 percent remains today. To stop further loss, residents of communities in northern…
Madagascar is facing an invasion. Not military, but amphibian. Toxic Asian common toads (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) have spread rapidly around the port city of Toamasina on the country’s east coast. The…
Rising temperatures and drying air pose problems for plants and animals around the planet. Amphibians, with their permeable skin and inability to travel far, are considered to be among the…
A fungus that has decimated frog populations around the world could get even deadlier, according to new research. The study found that hybridization of different types of the fungus creates…
TOAMASINA, Madagascar — Last January, when Tropical Cyclone Ava made landfall on Madagascar, wreaking havoc for 24 hours, people here knew they had more than usual to worry about. Ava…
Tropical rainforests are home to the vast majority of the world’s frog species today. Yet frog fossils from these moist environments have been incredibly rare, largely because the small animals…
An expedition through the rainforests, mountains and grasslands of Bolivia’s Madidi National Park has turned up hundreds of species previously unknown in the park, including dozens that could be new…
The world’s largest amphibian has become vanishingly rare in the wild, a new study has found. The Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) can reach lengths of more than 1.8 meters (6…
Imagine you are the head of a small NGO trying to conserve vultures. You have limited funds, and have to choose your actions carefully. Would supplementary feeding increase the population?…
Scientists have discovered six new species of peeping frog in the western Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Michoacán. All six frogs belong to the genus Eleutherodactylus and were described…
Scientists started to get worried in the 1970s when frogs in Australia and Central and South America began disappearing. The culprit seemed to be a chytrid fungus that colonized frogs’…
A deadly disease that has ripped through frog populations around the world, contributing to huge declines in many species and the outright extinction of several others, has shown little sign…
Madagascar is known as an ark for biodiversity that's found nowhere else on the planet. Unfortunately, it's also known for the bevy of threats that those distinctive species that live…
Frogs can survive in oil palm plantations, but at the cost of diversity of species — and the impact can radiate out deep into neighboring forest ecosystems, according to a…
At turns haunting, humorous or just downright bizarre, the studio portraits of the thousands of animal species that photographer Joel Sartore has collected are more than just a catalog of…
The equatorial ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are packed with plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Formed as tectonic plates in eastern Africa have slowly pulled away from…
