Human pollution and frog declines

The impending loss of the frogs in Panama led me to delve more deeply into the literature on amphibian extinctions. The decline of amphibians is global pattern that was noticed by individual researchers comparing observations from around the world. The researchers at international meetings realized that one talk after another was telling the same story, from sites around the world. Some of these sites were pristine, others heavily influenced by humans. The picture that has emerged over the last few decades as a result of the herpetologists realizing the global pattern is sobering, but is also a testament to science as an international endeavor and the broad geographic approach that leads to generalizations that could not be reached if research was constrained to one small area.

In the 1990’s, Andrew Blaustein, at Oregon State University, began to see declines in the species of frogs he was studying in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. He understood that ultraviolet radiation (UVR) was increasing world-wide because of global ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere. Chlorofluorocarbons used in aerosol cans, now being phased out from use in air conditioners, refrigerators and freezers, enter the air at ground level and work their way into the upper atmosphere. Here, ozone that forms naturally absorbs the ultraviolet rays from the sun. The chlorofluorocarbons destroy the ozone that protects life on the Earth’s surface.

Blaustein hypothesized that increased UVR might be harming amphibians. This hypothesis was reasonable because UVR is known to cause damage to organisms and most amphibians lay their eggs in shallow water where they are exposed to high levels of sunlight and UVR. At higher elevations, UVR is more intense, plus it is possible that amphibians were already close to their upper tolerance levels before UVR started to increase. While these animals did evolve under such exposure, it was not certain if increases in the levels of UVR were responsible for harming the frogs. A series of experiments confirmed that the UVR increases similar to those caused by global ozone depletion lowered survival rates of eggs. One piece of the puzzle was starting to come together.

So this begs the question, will UVR increase or decrease in future years? The use of CFC’s has decreased since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1991. The decline in stratospheric ozone has led to a halt in the loss of ozone, but still, almost 20 years later, the upper atmosphere has not healed itself. Now we know part of the reason why, nitrous oxide produced as a byproduct of agricultural nitrogen fertilization is also damaging stratospheric ozone. As humanity struggles to feed more and more people, we have been and continue to use ever more fertilizers. Some of this fertilizer is converted by bacteria into nitrous oxide, and this gas works its way into the upper atmosphere, destroying ozone and allowing more UVR to pass to the surface of the earth. Thus, UVR will continue to be a problem for some species of amphibians.

Subsequent research by Carlos Davidson and colleagues from the University of California at Davis established the role of pesticides in amphibian declines. This research examined the declining red-legged frog in California. Careful analyses of data on red-legged frog populations from 237 sites revealed that one of the most important factors in population declines was distance downwind from agricultural fields. Other research over last decades has demonstrated that pesticides and other volatile chemical contaminants can be transported substantial distances and in some cases concentrated by atmospheric processes. High mountain areas as well as arctic habitats are areas where volatile pesticide pollutants are concentrating. These are habitats that seem pristine.

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to these contaminants because their eggs require direct exposure to water, and water carries the contaminants from where they are deposited on land and water upstream, to the eggs. The potential for concentration of these contaminants in the food chain is well recognized; almost a half century ago Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring” and illuminated the propensity of these toxins to bioconcentrate and cause environmental harm. Before Silent Spring, most people did not realize that very low levels of these chemicals added to the environment could have adverse biological effects because they were concentrated by natural processes occurring in all ecosystems. Now, the effect could be harming species of frogs and contributing to their declines. Furthermore, a new and unanticipated threat of the pesticides has been documented.

Dr. Tyrone Hayes of University of California Berkeley, was conducting experiments on a common weed killer, atrazine. Seventy-seven million pounds of this herbicide are applied each year to fields in the US. The experiments were designed to detect minimum levels of atrazine which would cause negative effects on aquatic animals. In these experiments, frog eggs are exposed to a range of concentrations of the atrizine to extremely low concentrations that nobody would think had any effect on any organism.

He was surprised to find that vanishingly small concentrations of atrazine feminized leopard frogs while they were developing in the laboratory. Then, Dr. Hayes and his graduate students found similar results in field experiments. Further investigation showed that African clawed frogs exposed to water with as little as one part per billion of atrazine developed improperly, with inhibited larynx growth. A larynx is important to the males of many species of frogs because singing is how they attract mates. The question was how could these compounds be active at such low concentrations? This was a particularly vexing question because negative effects were expected at higher concentrations, and the effects diminished as concentrations decreased. Then, suddenly at very low concentrations, negative effects on the animals popped up again.

The answer is that the chemicals such as atrazine mimic hormones that all animals use in cell-to-cell communication. These compounds signal cells in developing animals to take one or another developmental pathway. The compounds are only biologically active at very low concentrations; animals only produce very low concentrations of hormones to signal developing cells. Many compounds made by humans and released into the environment mimic estrogen, a hormone with strong influence on sex characteristics of both males and females as embryos develop.
Ecoestrogens have been implicated in a number of cases of feminization of wildlife. It is not currently known how these compounds influence development of human embryos, and potential effects of ecoestrogens on humans is an area at the forefront of environmental concern. In this case, amphibians serve as the canaries in the mine; they are quite sensitive to pollutants in the water because they develop fully exposed to the water.

The increased used of fertilizers in agriculture was already mentioned, but more intensive agriculture also requires more use of pesticides. The use of pesticides has skyrocketed in the decades since their widespread introduction in the mid 1900’s, and we have fed the world in part because we have limited some pests (insects and weeds) by using such compounds. The chances that use of these compounds and their release into the environment will decrease in future years are slim.

Other aquatic pollutants could be harming frogs as well. Mercury concentrations are so high that many fish from waters in the US and Europe should not be consumed. Even fishes from the mighty and mostly remote Amazon can have high enough burdens of mercury that regular consumption is not advised (gold mining upstream causes mercury contamination). Mercury can harm all animals, and less attention is paid to frogs than fish with respect to contamination. This is because fewer people consume frogs than fish.

Back to the fertilizers, further work by Dr. Blaustein demonstrated that nitrite, a common byproduct of runoff from fertilized agricultural lands, also harms development of frog eggs. Nitrate contamination downstream of fertilized areas is common with very high concentrations in the rivers and streams of many developed lands, particularly Western Europe and the Midwestern United States. To make things worse, combustion of fossil fuels leads to substantial amounts of nitrogen deposition and causes nitrogen contamination of many aquatic habitats. The effect is particularly strong near industrial or urban areas. More pieces of the puzzle of global amphibian declines were falling into place.