If Becker was going to find a probiotic that could protect the golden frogs, he would need to go to Panama. “This bacterium was from California and these frogs are from Panama.” Perhaps frogs from different parts of their carry their own particular probiotic microbes that have adapted to thrive on their skins. “We thought maybe it wasn’t a good fit,” says Becker. The probiotic microbe didn’t persist on the frogs’ skins, and it did nothing to save them from the fungus. If the approach worked and the frogs survived, perhaps they could be released into the wild, cloaked in their living armour. They soaked the frogs in a J.lividum bath and challenged them with Bd. And when the team applied the bacterium to yellow-legged frogs that didn’t already have it, those individuals also became resistant.Ĭould J.lividum protect other frogs too? To find out, Matthew Becker from James Madison University, who was part of the original team, teamed up with Brian Gratwicke from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who had a group of lab-bred golden frogs. It was an anti-Bd probiotic, a microbial shield that turned frogs into resistant fungus-fighters. They found that a few amphibians, including two salamanders and the mountain yellow-legged frogs, naturally carry a bacterium called Janthinobacterium lividum that stopped Bd from growing. In 2006, a team of researchers stumbled across a possible solution. But if they release these animals back into their native habitat, where Bd still persists, who’s to say they wouldn’t just die? Their ark is full, but there’s no Mount Ararat in sight. The Panamanian golden frog is just one of its victims.Ĭonservationists have been incredibly successful at breeding the frog in captivity. It is catholic in its choice of hosts and apocalyptic in its effects. It is the same grim antagonist that has severely reaped the populations of some 200 amphibians and seems to be working its way through the rest. Several factors took the frog to the edge of oblivion but the one that landed the most punishing blows was a chytrid fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd for short. It is an ecological phantom, a ghost of nature. It was a Panamanian golden frog, and it is extinct in the wild. I mean Black and Yellow-colours so intense that you almost expect to turn the creature over and find a country of origin embossed on its underside. I was walking out of a room overlooking the main shark tank when I saw something in a glass cage embedded in the wall, something small, black and yellow.

I saw a ghost at the Vancouver Aquarium last summer.

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