Biologists first started noticing a worldwide decline in amphibian populations about 20 years ago. The ecological research of Professor Ross Alford of JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology was instrumental in establishing the reality of amphibian population crashes in protected habitats. Australian amphibian populations, most diverse in the Wet Tropics, are recognised by the Queensland and federal governments as subject to this global trend of severe population declines.
From the late 1970s, starting in southeast Queensland, rainforest frog populations experienced a series of crashes, culminating in the disappearance of eight species in the Wet Tropics in the 1990s. The causes of these declines, and similar ones in other parts of the world, remained a mystery until researchers in the Schools of Public Health & Tropical Medicine and Veterinary & Biomedical Sciences, led by Professor Rick Speare, discovered and described the disease chytridiomycosis and the organism, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which causes it.
Subsequent research by JCU’s Amphibian Disease Ecology Group showed that this disease caused the declines and disappearances in the Wet Tropics.
Professor Alford, working with a group of international researchers in Panama, proved conclusively that the disease can be absent from all amphibians in a region, appear suddenly, and cause massive die-offs.
His group is now investigating how the fungus interacts with other microbes that live on frogs, with the goal of developing probiotic mechanisms to prevent and treat the disease.
Because of JCU research, chytrid fungal infection has been recognised as a “Key Threatening Process” in the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
A Threat Abatement Plan drafted by Professor Speare has been adopted by the Australian Government.
Professor Speare is collaborating with a group of African researchers to test the hypothesis that the fungus has spread from a source in Africa to Australia and elsewhere, almost certainly as a bi-product of the global amphibian trade.
As a result of his efforts, the World Organisation for Animal Health has placed chytrid fungal infection on the Wildlife Diseases List, the first entry specific to amphibians. The Organisation is developing standards that will establish quarantine and other mechanisms to minimise its spread.
