Epidemic disease decimates amphibian abundance, species diversity, and evolutionary history in the highlands of central Panama.

ABSTRACT: Amphibian populations around the world are experiencing unprecedented declines attributed to a chytrid fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Despite the severity of the crisis, quantitative analyses of the effects of the epidemic on amphibian abundance and diversity have been unavailable as a result of the lack of equivalent data collected before and following disease outbreak. We present a community-level assessment combining long-term field surveys and DNA barcode data describing changes in abundance and evolutionary diversity within the amphibian community of El Copé, Panama, following a disease epidemic and mass-mortality event. The epidemic reduced taxonomic, lineage, and phylogenetic diversity similarly. We discovered that 30 species were lost, including five undescribed s

SUBMITTER: Crawford AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2922291 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature