Alford Ross A, Bradfield Kay S, Richards Stephen J
School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia.
Nature. 2007 May 31;447(7144):E3-4; discussion E5-6. doi: 10.1038/nature05940.
Is global warming contributing to amphibian declines and extinctions by promoting outbreaks of the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis? Analysing patterns from the American tropics, Pounds et al. envisage a process in which a single warm year triggers die-offs in a particular area (for instance, 1987 in the case of Monteverde, Costa Rica). However, we show here that populations of two frog species in the Australian tropics experienced increasing developmental instability, which is evidence of stress, at least two years before they showed chytrid-related declines. Because the working model of Pounds et al. is incomplete, their test of the climate-linked epidemic hypothesis could be inconclusive.
全球变暖是否通过促使壶菌（蛙壶菌）爆发而导致两栖动物数量减少和灭绝？通过分析来自美洲热带地区的模式，庞兹等人设想了这样一个过程：一个温暖的年份引发特定区域的死亡事件（例如，1987年在哥斯达黎加蒙特维德的情况）。然而，我们在此表明，澳大利亚热带地区的两种蛙类种群在出现与壶菌相关的数量减少至少两年前，就经历了发育不稳定性增加的情况，这是压力的证据。由于庞兹等人的工作模型不完整，他们对气候关联流行病假说的检验可能没有定论。
