Frogs Becoming Homogenous as Species Disappear

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Like neighborhood coffee shops and independent movie theaters around the United States, unusual varieties of frogs are rapidly disappearing from rainforests in Central America.

Like neighborhood coffee shops and independent movie theaters around the United States, unusual varieties of frogs are rapidly disappearing from rainforests in Central America.

A fungal infection seems to be hitting those rare species of frogs harder than common ones, found a new study, leading to local extinctions and a homogenized version of nature where everything is more similar than it used to be. The result is both a less interesting world aesthetically and a less resilient one biologically.

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"Everyone knew that amphibian declines were really bad," said ecologist Kevin Smith, of Washington University in St. Louis. "But it looks like it's worse than we actually thought."

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