Weather cycles may drive toad decline
By Susan Milius
For the first time, scientists have linked climate change to a specific mechanism
of doom for one of North America’s amphibians.
The plump, lumpy western toad, Bufo boreas, has been declining even in relatively
pristine havens like the heights of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, laments
Joseph M. Kiesecker of Pennsylvania State University in State College. He and his
colleagues propose an explanation in the April 5 Nature.