As if amphibians weren’t facing enough—a killer fungal disease, habitat destruction, pollution, and global warming—now scientists say that a second fungal disease could spell disaster for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of species. A new paper published today in Science finds that this new disease has the potential to wipe out salamanders and newts across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas. The bright side? The disease doesn’t harm frogs, toads, or caecilians. Leer más.

The four main groups of crested newt species differ in body shape. This morphological variation is correlated with ecological differences: sturdier newts are more terrestrial and slenderer newts more aquatic. This suggests that the differentiation in body shape drove their evolution and that gradually more and more slender newts evolved (by looking at related newts we can deduce that the ‘ancestral’ crested newt was stocky). Leer más.

Cape Melville rainbow skink and Cape Melville bar-lipped skink bring the tally of species unknown to science that have been found in small, remote area to eight. Leer más.

he journal Science today published a study documenting a new threat to the world’s salamanders from a deadly skin-eating fungus. A relative of the killer chytrid fungus that has devastated frog populations, the new disease called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bs, is sweeping through salamander populations in Europe. While the disease has not yet reached the United States, scientists found that imports of infected individuals pose a risk of spreading the highly lethal disease to native salamanders in the United States. Leer más.