Protecting frogs against the invisible killer called chytrid was never going to be easy. The fungus has already wiped out more species than any other known disease. But a recent…
Giraffes have many problems to deal with. There’s habitat loss and poaching. Then there’s a mysterious skin disease that’s been recorded in 13 giraffe populations in seven African countries. The…
Tropical deforestation may spur the transmission of malaria at levels much higher than once thought, according to a recent study. Disease ecologist Andrew MacDonald and his Stanford University colleague Erin…
Light pollution could lead to more infections with West Nile virus by increasing the amount of time that small songbirds hold on to the virus, according to a new study.…
In November 2017, Joice Ruggeri and her colleagues came upon a pond with several dead tadpoles and a few dead fish in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in…
Fines and the threat of disease could dissuade consumers from buying bushmeat, according to recent surveys of markets where wildlife species are sold for food in the Southeast Asian country…
Between 2005 and 2010, 24 huemul deer in Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins National Park developed a mysterious foot disease. Their hooves swelled, they limped and appeared to be in pain. In…
PUERTO GALILEA, Peru — In 2009, special decrees signed by then-president Alan García opened up vast swaths of Peruvian indigenous territory to resource exploitation. Indigenous groups in the northern portion of…
A fungal disease that has been wiping out amphibians across the world may be the world's most destructive disease ever recorded, according to a new study. Biologists first described the…
Recent headlines around the world indicate that the government of Botswana is considering significant changes to the country’s approach to wildlife management. I give the government great credit for the…
Scientists have long wondered why zebras wear striped coats — none other than Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin are known to have debated the question well over a century…
Chimpanzees' health is not just an issue of concern for conservationists or animal rights activists. Great apes can spread plagues of biblical proportions — the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) first…
A mystery disease outbreak that has devastated more than 20 species of starfish along the western coast of North America since 2013 has claimed yet another victim: the sunflower sea…
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…
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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’…
Every year since 1993, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, one of the authors of this piece, has returned to his hometown of São Paulo, a big city inside a biodiversity hotspot…
In May 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) suddenly died. Entire herds perished, their bodies littering the steppe grasslands of central Kazakhstan as if dropped from the sky.…
A team of scientists from Seychelles, the United States and the United Kingdom has found a new caecilian, perhaps the smallest species of the legless amphibian on Earth. "As soon…
