Panamanian biologist Edgardo Griffith had no doubt the lethal chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) would eventually strike the cloud forests of the extinct volcano known as El Valle de Anton, 50 miles southwest of Panama City. Griffith, a frog researcher and rescue specialist for the Houston Zoo, had seen dead frogs strewn in streams and on hills a dozen miles from El Valle since January of this year, their skin sloughed off, their eyes pried open, their limbs splayed wide in rigor mortis. So when a U.S. laboratory in May returned the dreaded biopsy results for a stricken frog from El Valle itself, he was prepared. “We had seen this fungus work its way across Central America for more than a decade and seen dozens of... [Log in to read more]