Re: Regarding Global Decrease in Frog Population
CurtAdams@aol.com
Sun, 13 Oct 1996 16:24:55 -0400
There are no new ideas I'm aware of for the decrease in frog population.
Ozone depletion, leading to increased ultraviolet radiation, is a popular
theory, but some of the heaviest losses have been in tropical frog
populations, where there has been as yet essentially no change in ozone or UV
(it's still a polar phenomena). The only worldwide change I'm aware of is
the increase in CO2, and I've heard no hypotheses for this killing off frogs
(you could cook up one with PH, perhaps).
The deformed frog issue has to be approached with skepticism, as we don't yet
know how many frogs were deformed before we started looking. Minnesota is a
big state with a lot of frogs, and there would be a lot of deformed frogs
there under any circumstances.