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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Understanding Amphibian Decline: The Role Of Pesticides And The Pathogenic Chytrid Fungus On Amphibians And Aquatic Communities, Taegan A. Mcmahon
Understanding Amphibian Decline: The Role Of Pesticides And The Pathogenic Chytrid Fungus On Amphibians And Aquatic Communities, Taegan A. Mcmahon
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Amphibians are the most threatened taxon on the planet. Declines have been associated with over-exploitation, habitat loss, pollution, and pathogenic diseases, but of these factors, pollution and disease have been relatively under-studied. Here, I investigated: 1) the impacts of commonly used pesticides on aquatic communities, 2) the effect of these pesticides on amphibian susceptibility to the pathogenic chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and 3) whether there are non-amphibian hosts of Bd and 4) how to best quantify the survival of Bd through ontogeny of the host.
In my first research chapter, I quantified the effects of environmentally relevant concentrations of …