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Researchers at the University of Murcia showed that the contamination poses a threat to amphibians (22/06/2012)

A study of amphibians, which have involved researchers from the Faculty of Biology, University of Murcia and Mar Andrew Egea Torralva has proven the negative impact of pollution in this group of vertebrates, to the point of posing a threat for survival.

The impact may be such that the researchers suggest that environmentally relevant concentrations of chemicals may be affecting the current global amphibian decline.

To reach these conclusions has been carried out a meta-analysis of experimental studies, a method that saves the limitations of the reviews that have prevailed in recent years to measure the impact of chemicals on amphibians, which have been based on the counting the number of significant results compared to the non-significant.

The methodology, based on evidence of significant results does not present a high statistical power and to determine the magnitude of the effect or compare responses between groups established a priori.

With the meta-analysis of experimental studies have determined the effects of various ecologically relevant concentrations of different chemicals on survival, mass, development and frequency of malformations in amphibians, and explore the effect of interaction between compounds chemicals and other environmental factors on survival.

The overall effect was a reduction in median survival and mass, and a large increase in the frequency of malformations, but did not find an overall impact of the chemical compounds in development.

Also found that the impact of contamination varies depending on the experimental conditions, developmental stage and type of contaminant, if only differences were found among weak families.

This result suggests that the variation in sensitivity to contamination is generally independent of phylogeny.

Furthermore, although individual studies indicated that the interaction between chemicals and other factors may have synergistic effects, overall this interaction has no significant effect on survival of amphibians.

Andrew Egea Torralva Sea belong to the Department of Zoology and Physical Anthropology of the educational institution Murcia.

Source: Universidad de Murcia

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