Adriano Losso, The frog pandemic (Animal & Nature 2021)

Through this portfolio I’d like to raise awareness on frogs and their survival. The subject is the iconic Australian Green Tree Frog (Litoria caerulea). Over winter 2021, this beautiful frog has been hit by a mysterious outbreak leading to a mass mortality event across Eastern Australia. Now that we all are pretty familiar with the concept of pandemic, I’d like to point out how frogs are in a continuous battle for survival with such things. Globally, frogs are threatened by the infamous and deadly fungus often called amphibian chytrid fungus, which already caused 50 extinctions and a decline in population for more than 500 amphibian species. This fungus attacks the skin, which frogs use to breathe, drink, and control electrolytes important for the heart to function. For this specific case in Australia, it is not clear yet if the chytrid fungus is the culprit, or if other factors are involved (at least at the moment when I’m writing this). Thing is that many other amphibian species are suffering during this outbreak and frogs are too damn important for their ecosystems to let them go (35 out of about 242 Australian native species are threatened with extinction!). All these photos were taken around the Sydney Basin during the first half of 2021 (all four have been photographed in situ - no need to disturb them more than necessary).

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.