By Susan Milius
Doctoring whole ponds as well as the tadpoles living in them has turned a disease hot spot back into a healthy home for wild toads.
Majorcan midwife toads now flourish in mountain ponds once infected with the lethal chytrid fungus called Bd (for Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), says Trent Garner of the Institute of Zoology in London. The fungus attacks more than 700 amphibian species on five continents, shriveling or wiping out susceptible populations and even snuffing out species.