Last year we started a project surveying terrestrial-breeding frogs in the cloud forests of the Amazonian Andes. The project aims to explain how epizootics (epidemics of wildlife) of chytridiomycosis occur among terrestrial-breeding frogs, and how climate interacts with disease dynamics to trigger these epizootics. As part of our work, we have been marking and recapturing hundreds of frogs in a dozen transects in the cloud forest. After one year, we have been able to recapture many of these frogs, and collect valuable data regarding their infection status, growth rate, movements and habitat use. We are pleased to confirm a few preliminary findings...for example, some frogs have been able to clear infection without any external intervention. The greatest majority of recaptured frogs barely move around the original or previous point of capture, suggesting they have extremely small home ranges. We recaptured one frog after 12 months, sitting on the same shrub!
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