Poison Frog Population Decline

718 Words3 Pages

Around the world, poison frog populations have been declining due to unknown reasons. Two experiments were conducted promptly in order to find the cause of the disappearances. One hypothesis suggested that the poison frogs are in a decline because of an infectious fungus called chytrid fungus. On the contrary, another hypothesis alludes to the idea that decreasing leaf litter is causing the widespread decline. Although it seems that there are multiple reasons for the decline, it is unquestionable that, according to the data from the experiments, that leaf litter is one of the main components of the decreasing population of poison frogs, having multiple replicates of data is important in finding the answer to the decline, and that there is much more to investigate about this problem. According the data from the experiments, the decreasing amount of leaf litter is a potential threat to strawberry poison dart frogs. This relationship occurs because moist habitats under leaves are essential in keeping the frogs' skin moist. Also, the …show more content…

In the experiment that tested whether leaf litter played a role in poison frog decline, there was ten plots that had no change in leaf litter. The data was fairly consistent until plot number seven appeared to have sixteen frogs in it. This was more than twice of the amount of frogs than any of the other plots with no change in leaf litter. Clearly, this is an outlier in the data and could have thrown off the average amount of strawberry poison dart frogs in leaf litters. If 1,000 frogs had been tested, this outlier would not have made such an impact on the mean. One plot in each condition represents 10% of all the poison frogs that lie in the corresponding treatment's population. This means that out of one million poison frogs, one hundred thousand frogs are being represented in a single