A biology professor at Bowdoin College in Maine has witnessed what may be the largest mass die-off of frogs ever documented.
Last summer, Nat Wheelwright was observing hundreds of thousands of wood frogs in a pond behind his home. In one 24 hour period, every single one died.
Tests showed the frogs died from a disease called ranavirus. It impacts amphibians but isn't usually fatal. His findings have been published in the Herpetological Review.
"The disease happened so fast it killed 200,000 frogs so quickly it couldn't have been a transmission from individual to individual,” Wheelwright explained.
Wheelwright says stress may have made the virus fatal, but the cause is a mystery.
It's possible that pesticide use or warming temperatures caused by climate change is a factor. He hopes the incident inspires more citizen scientists to try and observe what is happening in their own backyards.
