Worldwide, amphibians are dying. And University of Pittsburgh ecologist Rick Relyea said he knows one way to kill them: Spray them with a little Roundup, the best-selling weed killer from St. Louis-based Monsanto.
In a new study from Relyea, published in this month's issue of the journal Ecological Applications, Roundup killed 98 percent of tadpoles during a three-week test in simulated shallow ponds. In a separate dry experiment, Roundup killed 79 percent of young frogs and toads after just one day. "It's much deadlier than we thought," Relyea said.
Monsanto says that Roundup isn't meant to be used near water and that its directions clearly say so. But many amphibians live in shallow puddles, Relyea said. He said he worries that wetlands within fields and forests are accidentally being sprayed. Something clearly is killing amphibians. They have declined drastically since the 1970s, biologists say. Nearly a third of the world's amphibians are threatened, according to a global survey last year by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. By contrast, 12 percent of bird species and 20 percent of mammals are threatened, according to the union's Web site, www.redlist.org.
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Relyea said he agrees that habitat loss is the most important factor. There isn't evidence yet that Roundup is contributing to the worldwide decline, he said. But his experiments show its striking lethality. Relyea added one tablespoon of Roundup Grass and Weed Killer to 250 gallons of water in cattle-watering tanks where tadpoles were growing with soil and food. That amount mimicked a worst-case accidental spraying of a small wetland, Relyea said.
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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/sciencemedicine/story/E50D85CDBEEFE65986257057001FC5A6?OpenDocument
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