Topic: Whatever
Especially when you're used as a little green pregnancy test.
Background and summary: there is a summit going on in Washington DC right now, and its aim is to launch a rescue plan for threatened amphibian species that is projected to cost tens of millions of US dollars a year for at least a decade.
Anyone who has paid any sort of attention to environmental issues for the past decade is probably well aware that there have been many reports that things have been going badly for amphibians - the many stories about the growth in the numbers of grossly mutated frogs, for example - but apparently last year a global study called the Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA) found that the situation was more dire than expected. Nearly a third of amphibian populations around the world were found to be threatened with extinction according the criteria set out by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). (By comparison, according to the GAA key findings, 23% of mammalian and 12% of bird species are so classified.) The plans being discussed at the DC summit are a response to these findings.
While habitat loss was found to be the most serious threat to amphibians, a recently discovered fungus has been taking a severe toll on amphibian populations. The fungus causes a disease called chytridiomycosis that causes skin damage that impairs amphibians' ability to absorb air and moisture through their skins. The fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has been found in the Americas, Europe and Australia, the areas with the highest numbers of critically endangered and threatened amphibian species.
The participants in the summit are currently debating the merits of a theory, proposed by team of researchers from South Africa and Australia led by a professor at James Cook University in Australia, that suggests that the fungus was spread by the use of a species of African frog (Xenopus laevis) for pregnancy testing in the 1930s and '40s. The BBC story at the first link has more details, but apparently, the female of the species would lay eggs when injected with a sample of urine from a pregnant woman. Consequently, thousands of frogs were shipped annually from Africa to Europe, North America and Australia to be used for pregnancy and fertility testing.
This article (link via BBC) gives a history of the use of Xenopus in the hobby acquariums and laboratories of Europe. I recommend reading the first few pages - the scientific bits can be skipped over without losing the thread of the story, which relates the rise of Xenopus as a significant laboratory subject while throwing out a number of casual but tantalizing references to scientific politics and rivalries at the end of nineteenth century. But if that's too much to read, the 3rd and 4th pages are the real highlight, as they relate the story of Lancelot Hogben, a left-wing British scientist who began working Xenopus during his tenure at the University of Cape Town in the late 1920s, and both continued his own work with the species and advocated its use to others upon his return to England. Fascinating stuff.
Okay, having already outed myself as a nerd (to the maybe three people reading this who didn't already know that was the case), let me just take it to the next level. Since I've got classes in colonialism and globalization this semester, and a class taught by a committed feminist animal rights activist, I'm seeing all kinds of links to topics that have been coming up in my classes. The ethics of using animals in medical testing is an obvious issue raised by this story (the Xenopus test sounds far more humane than the other contemporary pregnancy tests, but it was still being raised in an unnatural environment and subjected to unknown stresses in the course of testing). It also provides an unusual illustration of one of the many ways that the resources of colonized countries were exploited for the benefit of the colonizer. And it describes how colonization facilitated the mobility of intellectual and natural resources, which was an earlier version of the massive flows of people, information and other resources that students of globalization are currently examining. I've also got an idea that there's a link between Xenopus and the process of bringing pregnancy and childbirth under the control of modern medicine, but that's a suspicion, not anything I'm capable of backing up with arguments or examples at the moment.
All that out of the story of an odd little African amphibian. Amazing, isn't it? Obviously, if the link between Xenopus and the prevalence of chytridiomycosis in Europe, Australia and the Americas can be proven, it will be yet another example of the unintended, unforeseen, and potentially devastating consequences of shuffling animals around the world with insufficient thought for the impact on the local environment. It seems appropriate that researchers from Australia, which suffers from the depradations of introduced species like the cane toad, rabbit and camel, among others, would find a possible link between the introduction of imported species and the decline of native ones. Unfortunately, the end result of this story is to make me feel a bit wary about human capacity to plan to "save" threatened amphibians without causing negative consequences to other species, because we really don't have the most stellar record when it comes to predicting the consequences of our own actions, particularly in sensitive and complex settings like ecosystems.