It all started in 2008 when scientists started noticing fire salamanders in the Netherlands were disappearing. By 2011, nearly all salamanders in affected Dutch populations had been killed off, as…
Biologists Chace Holzheuser and Bruce Means are on their hands and knees in a Florida swamp, pawing through dark water, leaves and muck as cicadas hum unceasingly in the treetops…
Growing more than two feet in length, the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) is the largest salamander species in North America. Hellbenders have been on the decline for at least 30 years,…
The red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is a creature of Earth, although a brief physical description can cast sufficient doubt. One deep red stripe runs the length of its body, though…
Any day now. That’s when Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), the “salamander-eating” fungus, is expected to arrive in the United States, home to more than a third of the world’s species of…
If you take a stroll in the woods, it’s worth pausing for a moment to take in the sights and sounds, peer into the undergrowth, or even turn over a…
Parrots around the globe are captured and sold as pets in a thriving illegal market that has carried more than 19 million birds across borders since 1975. The deadly beak…
Indonesia's Ujung Kulon National Park sits at the westernmost tip of Java Island. Its remote peninsular location offers access only from the east, along a rough road used mostly by…
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…
Rising temperatures seem to have made a southern African park less hospitable to the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.), the carrier of a dangerous disease-causing microorganism, new research shows. Named for…
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…
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…
A team at University of Texas Austin has developed a new method for identifying whether a mosquito is of the Aedes aegypti species, which is responsible for transmitting Zika, dengue and other deadly diseases. The…
On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks. Listen here: Our guest is Sarah Olson, an…
Ebola is once again sweeping Africa, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where a new outbreak was announced Aug. 1. As of Sept. 30, the World Health…
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…
Armadillos are a popular bushmeat in the Brazilian Amazon, but handling and eating these scaly mammals could put humans at risk of leprosy, a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical…
Climate change is reshaping relations between parks, people and the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. But more and deeper research is needed to determine likely long-term impacts.
Scientists have long suspected a relationship between deforestation and some infectious diseases. For instance, the 2014 Ebola crisis has been linked to logging that may have put workers and their…
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’…
