What she found there was that the Elegant Harlequin Toad ( Atelopus elegans) was not falling neatly into the general understanding of how Bd affected highland versus lowland harlequin toads. In 2007, Flechas started working with harlequin toads in the Colombian lowlands, on Gorgona Island. One of the researchers trying to determine why the Santa Marta toads seem to be faring better is Dr. Four harlequin toad species are already classified as Extinct, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but this number is likely higher. Today, of the 94 harlequin toad species that have been assessed by the IUCN, 83 percent are threatened with extinction, while about 40% of Atelopus species have disappeared from their known homes and have not been seen since the early 2000s, despite great efforts to find them. “Because of this there is a sense among harlequin toad experts that maybe Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta holds the key, that it is the holy grail, that maybe this is where we will find the answers that we have been looking for.”Ĭonservationists and researchers have been looking for answers since the mid-80s, when Bd started its fatal wave across the world, including in South and Central America, Australia and the western United States, shocking everyone witnessing the unprecedented and sudden die-offs. Lina Valencia, Atelopus Survival Initiative founder, co-coordinator of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group Atelopus Task Force and Andean countries coordinator for Re:wild. “When you go to Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, you don’t see just one individual harlequin toad here or there, but dozens of individuals that belong to one of the most threatened groups of amphibians in the world,” says Dr. And it may be the key to preventing the extinctions of the remaining harlequin toad species across Latin America. Whatever the answer, one thing is for sure: something is happening in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Or is there something about the way the Indigenous communities are managing the habitat of these animals-land that they share-that is giving the toads a unique advantage? Is there something unique about the dynamics between these toads and Bd? Is the transmission rate of the disease low enough that it is outpaced by the toads’ reproductive rates? Is the prevalence of the disease low in their environment and if so, is there something in the environment that slows the spread of disease? Have these species developed some kind of special immune defenses to survive with chytrid or do they have special antifungal properties in their natural bacteria that is protecting them? Questions abound about why these four species seem to be living with the disease, chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus, in their environment, even infecting some of the animals.Īre these mountains so remote that a more deadly strain of the pathogen hasn’t yet made it here or were these populations once hard hit and we’re now seeing the toads after they have already rebounded? They appear to somehow be coexisting with the deadly chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which has decimated high-altitude species elsewhere in Latin America. Unlike the more than 80 percent of high-elevation harlequin toads that are threatened with some level of extinction, toads of this species are alive and seemingly well here, in this majestic place, up to 1.8 miles above sea level. Known as ‘El Viejito’ or ‘Little Old Man’ to the researchers who have seen him on every monitoring trip for the last 11 years in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, this harlequin toad, and all of the other toads of the Atelopus laetissimus species, are extraordinary. On the world’s tallest coastal mountain, with the beautiful symphony of a tropical, thriving forest and the dense vegetation of a place yet unspoiled by humanity, the most transformative encounter is with an animal that at first might not appear remarkable at all:Ī toad, light brown with pale yellow ridges down either side of his back, recognizable by the missing tip of a toe, perched on a large leaf drooping toward the earth under his weight.
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