# Amphibian Extinction



## Creator (May 21, 2008)

What will be the repercussions on humanity if amphibian were to become extinct?


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## chrispenycate (May 21, 2008)

All amphibians? Actually, not enormous. Though they inhabit a number of useful ecological niches, I can't think if any where they are unique. There would be minor population explosions in prey species, then things would find a new balance and settle down.
I would be very sad, though.


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## Creator (May 21, 2008)

Wow, the law of attraction makes coincidences happend. I got your name in my head and you just popped out on my thread!

OK but will mosquito bornes diseases increase and what other things will happen?


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## Nik (May 21, 2008)

Hi, do you mean frogs & toads, currently afflicted by a fungal disease ?

Or do you mean *all* amphibians, such as newts etc


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## chrispenycate (May 21, 2008)

Creator said:


> Wow, the law of attraction makes coincidences happend. I got your name in my head and you just popped out on my thread!
> 
> OK but will mosquito bornes diseases increase and what other things will happen?


Mosquitoes (and mosquito larvae) are eaten by a vast number of things, including frogs etc. So if you lost the amphibians, the balance might swing a tiny bit their way, but not totally. Same thing with the other things frogs, toads, newts and salamanders eat; there's always an alternative predator, so there's no population explosion.

At the other end of the food chain, lots of things eat frogs (including me) - you often see a heron with a frog in its beak, so they're going to be unhappy - but nothing I can think of eats them exclusively. Thus, no sudden disappearances, either. They'll doubtless have specialist parasites, too, and these risk extinction with their hosts, but who can get excited about a nematode (a nematoad?)
Summer nights will get a lot quieter.


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## MKG (May 21, 2008)

Extinction of frogs = explosion of slugs = extinction of lettuce. Now where would the world be without it?


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## Creator (May 22, 2008)

Oh yes, on the outlook amphibian extinction will affect food production!


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## Quokka (May 22, 2008)

As chrispenycate said taking amphibians out of the food chain isn't likely to have any permanent repercussions either up or down the food chain, except maybe in very specific locations and populations. Short term some species would suffer, some would boom but a new balance would probably be found fairly quickly and wouldn't be too different from the one before.

So the biggest repercussion for humans (apart from the loss of a unique lifeform) may well be the loss of a fairly effective 'canary in a cage' as far as the health of our waterways and surrounding areas go. Because amphibians are so vulnerable to changes in their environment monitoring the health of their populations may give early indications of changes in the environment before they get to levels that are directly harmful to humans and larger animals. 

...and in Australia we'd have to introduce something new to not eat the cane beetle.


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## Creator (May 22, 2008)

I see, unless they can be resurrected of course.

But the agriculture is going to be affected as no animals is going to eat the bugs damaging our crops. And about mosquitoes, despite having lots of predators today, there is a recent spike of mosquito borne diseases. 

How do you explain that? Are their predators having trouble?


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## Quokka (May 22, 2008)

Again I'd have to agree with chrispenycate in that there's still going to be insects, birds, spiders etc eating the bugs so although there will be an effect even having them disappear over night isn't going to cause an explosion in the bug population to the extent that there's a massive drop in food production.

I honestly wouldn't know why there's been an increase in mosquito born diseases but at a guess I would say it's got more to do with human activities such as growing populations, poverty, continued lack of medical care and increasingly trying to use/reclaim swamps and wetlands then it does the populations of insect predators.


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## Dave (May 22, 2008)

Quokka said:


> I honestly wouldn't know why there's been an increase in mosquito born diseases but at a guess I would say it's got more to do with human activities such as growing populations, poverty, continued lack of medical care and increasingly trying to use/reclaim swamps and wetlands then it does the populations of insect predators.


I don't know that there is any recent increase on a world-wide scale either. In the last Century a tremendous amount of work has been done to eradicate Tropical diesases. Many swamps have been drained, pesticides are still used on mosquitoes, and drugs on the disease.

If there is an increase it is because people are traveling much more than they used to; both as tourists from abroad, and also within the local areas from human populations with less natural resistance. There has been an increase in tropical diseases seen in the UK, but simply because long haul flight holidays are so much more popular.

There are other local factors to consider, for instance, bomb craters in conflict zones make ideal breeding sites for mosquitoes, and are very diffcult to fill in. Also the effect of the bans on the use of DDT and some older pesticides which were very effective on insects, but also on every other kind of wildlife too. Also, the recent rise in global temperatures that is pushing the distribution of mosquitoes north, and which will presumably continue.


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## Creator (May 22, 2008)

Well that's for other countries but however in my country's case. I come from Singapore and it has taken its pride in cleaniless for years.

There have been recent spikes of dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever and many people have died and even the first case of chinguagunya... dunno how to spell.


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## Creator (May 26, 2008)

Ok so if the biological indicator is missing, the consequence is that we humans will take some time to detect water pollution and by the time the problem is detected, health problems would be killing the populance already rite?


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## Creator (Jun 11, 2008)

I think it would be scary to see a huge swarms of mosquitos while walking in the streets or a rice paddy full of agricultural pest breeding more than usual.


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## Creator (Jun 13, 2008)

So in a few weeks after their disappearance, can I expect these disasterous events below?

1. Like say, a massive boost in invertebrate numbers. You would be walking in the streets and you see a huge "plague" of locusts but it turns out to be a plague of mosquitoes. ARghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! And for Farmers and gardeners, slugs and snails are popping up like in the movie, Slugs and destroying the crops.

2. Pesticide usage will increase, polluting the waters. And no canary in the cage to test them. It takes us much later to find out the effects.

3. Because of the increase in invertebrate numbers, insect-borne diseases become more common than common cold.

That would be too sci fi right?


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## chrispenycate (Jun 13, 2008)

Mosquitos I doubt; they are so r-strategy that conditions (existence of pools of water in particular) count more than predation in population growth. (basically one mosquito can have so many offspring if conditions are right that the number eaten is irrelevant) (not that I'm not in favour of anything that eats mosquitos).
Furthermore, lots of different things eat mosquitos , both in the laval and adult phases. Spiders, birds, bats, fish, other insects; everything likes a quick mosquito, and it doesn't hold the population down in a wet summer.

Slugs, now - not enough things eat slugs, and they reproduce slower. You might get a temporary rise there (not that they aren't partial to wet conditions. Mind you, so are amphibians.) If the cane beetle  from an earlier post has only amphibian predators its numbers could explode before a newbalance is found, ruining the economy of a small region (geographically speaking) Such things have happened in the past; humanity survives them.
Diseases with arthropod vectors are unlikely to rise to levels they have achieved in the past; too many different avenues of attack. And mankind survived those previous levels (yes, some of Africa was rendered unsuitable for herding by tzetze, but I don't think frogs would have helped much there)
If you want to be worried about insect vectors, worry about some fast-breeding species being carried in from some obscure corner of the globe in someone's souvenirs to somewhere it had no natural predators, carrying a disease it's never been considered worth studying and to which a significant percentage of the population have no resistance. 
But even that has happened in the past (with considerable social disruption, 'tis true.)


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## HardScienceFan (Jun 13, 2008)

why would an entire clade(Amphibia) go extinct?
no predicting what will happen.
ecosystem modelling might look like an exact science(browse the pages of Evolutionary Ecology and you'll see what i mean) but it isn't.
would herons resort to other prey animals? 
would their ethology change?


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## Creator (Jun 13, 2008)

Our amphibian friends are not doing too well with our technological onslaught which have killed off many species via environment destruction, alien invasions and water pollution which they had done a great job telling us and perhap owe our lives to.

But now a chytrid fungus is killing them in huge numbers, visualize.....
A pond full of suffocated frogs, should give you a good idea.


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## clovis-man (Jun 14, 2008)

Quokka said:


> So the biggest repercussion for humans (apart from the loss of a unique lifeform) may well be the loss of a fairly effective 'canary in a cage' as far as the health of our waterways and surrounding areas go. Because amphibians are so vulnerable to changes in their environment monitoring the health of their populations may give early indications of changes in the environment before they get to levels that are directly harmful to humans and larger animals.


 
Absolutely. Important safety tip: If there are no more toads, I'm not too optimistic about our chances either.


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## MKG (Jun 15, 2008)

We have a frog factory (better known as a pond) at the top of the garden. We also have a thrush factory in the form of a small wood. Result - we never set eyes on a slug, and our veggies grow undisturbed. We see a fair number of slug trails which just stop in the middle of nowhere - sure sign of a capture site. The frogs make mowing the lawn a very stop-start affair, but that's a small price to pay. If the frogs disappeared, I sincerely doubt that the thrushes could handle the slug situation all by themselves (mainly because thrushes themselves were hit by a virus a few years ago and still haven't fully recovered). 

Now this may all sound very twee, and there are lots of ways of dealing with slugs (not all of them very effective). However, although the food producers of this world would undoubtedly adjust, eventually, to the disappearance of frogs, it would take only one season for that situation to radically affect slug population and, hence, the availability of garden-grown vegetables. Those gardeners (and there are a lot of them) would therefore be forced into the normal supermarket veg. supply route (which operates on fixed crop numbers dictated by demand) and, suddenly, we would be faced with a collapsing food supply chain and spiralling food prices. 

Put that together with the current massive problems with honey bees (without which pollination would be a problem) and that twee situation changes its face - it becomes a direct threat to humans. We are still losing species variety at an alarming rate, and merely stating that we don't really know what the effect of any such loss may be is dangerously dismissive.

Anway - I like frogs.


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