Reports of malformed amphibians and global amphibian declines have led to public
concern, particularly because amphibians are thought to be indicator species of overall …

For over 350 million years, thousands of species of amphibians have lived on earth, but
since the 1990s they have been disappearing at an alarming rate, in many cases quite …

Global biodiversity losses have assumed the status of a crisis and as a part of it, many
amphibian populations are declining. It is estimated that the current rate of extinction is …

Background Members of the family Iridoviridae can cause severe diseases resulting in
significant economic and environmental losses. Very little is known about how iridoviruses …

Virulent parasites cannot persist in small host populations unless the parasite also has a
reservoir host. We hypothesize that, in hosts with complex life histories, one stage may act …

A chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, was found in salamanders, Ambystoma
tigrinum stebbinsi, collected in southern Arizona, USA. The chytrid was isolated and …

Ecologists increasingly recognize pathogens as playing significant roles in community
dynamics, yet few experimental studies have documented patterns of disease impacts on …

Our understanding of origins and spread of emerging infectious diseases has increased
dramatically because of recent applications of phylogenetic theory. Iridoviruses are …

Parasites play a prominent role in the ecology, evolution, and more recently, conservation of
many organisms. For example, emerging infectious diseases, including a group of lethal …

Amphibians exhibit the greatest diversity of reproductive strategies of all tetrapod
vertebrates. While authors have traditionally attributed the evolution of these strategies to …