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Quantitative evidence for global amphibian population declines

Nature volume 404, pages 752–755 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Although there is growing concern that amphibian populations are declining globally1,2,3, much of the supporting evidence is either anecdotal4,5 or derived from short-term studies at small geographical scales6,7,8. This raises questions not only about the difficulty of detecting temporal trends in populations which are notoriously variable9,10, but also about the validity of inferring global trends from local or regional studies11,12. Here we use data from 936 populations to assess large-scale temporal and spatial variations in amphibian population trends. On a global scale, our results indicate relatively rapid declines from the late 1950s/early 1960s to the late 1960s, followed by a reduced rate of decline to the present. Amphibian population trends during the 1960s were negative in western Europe (including the United Kingdom) and North America, but only the latter populations showed declines from the 1970s to the late 1990s. These results suggest that while large-scale trends show considerable geographical and temporal variability, amphibian populations are in fact declining—and that this decline has been happening for several decades.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Amphibian population trends from 1950 to 1997 using all 936 populations.
Figure 3: Amphibian population trends from 1960 to 1997 for North America and western Europe (including the United Kingdom).

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the researchers who contributed amphibian population data and, in particular, J. Loman, T. Beebee and S. Zumbach for large unpublished data sets. This work was supported by Wildlife Habitat Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology, University of Ottawa, 30 Marie Curie, Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ontario, Canada

    Jeff. E. Houlahan & C. Scott Findlay

  2. Institute of Environment, University of Ottawa, 555 King Edward Street, Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ontario, Canada

    C. Scott Findlay

  3. Zoologisches Institut, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, Zürich, CH-8057 , Switzerland

    Benedikt R. Schmidt

  4. Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Sektion Hochschulen und Wissenschaft, Espace de l'Europe 10 , Neuchâtel, CH-2010, Switzerland

    Andrea H. Meyer

  5. Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences , Moscow, 117071, Russia

    Sergius L. Kuzmin

Authors
  1. Jeff. E. Houlahan
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  2. C. Scott Findlay
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  3. Benedikt R. Schmidt
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  4. Andrea H. Meyer
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  5. Sergius L. Kuzmin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeff. E. Houlahan.

Supplementary information

41586_2000_BF35008052_MOESM1_ESM.doc

Supporting documentation of the 936 amphibian population time series used in 'Quantitative evidence for global amphibian population declines'. (DOC 97 kb)

Population graphs (ZIP 76 kb)

Data sets >= 7 years (DOC 14 kb)

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Houlahan, J., Findlay, C., Schmidt, B. et al. Quantitative evidence for global amphibian population declines. Nature 404, 752–755 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35008052

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