Word: fungus
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...surface," he says. "Every time anybody goes searching in P.N.G. anywhere, they find new things." Richards estimates that 350 species of frog have been identified on the island of New Guinea, but predicts the number will eventually pass 600. With frog populations worldwide under threat from habitat destruction, fungus infections and introduced predators, Richards, whose research is funded by Conservation International, believes recording the amphibians is of vital importance. "New Guinea, outside of the Amazon and some areas of central Africa, has the largest areas of rainforest left," he says. "Nobody is working there, and what's there...
...discreet is this steady creep toward Talibanism that it only hit me last week, after a visit to the beauty salon. Usually, framed photos of coiffed brides adorn the walls, but I arrived to find the coffee-colored walls blank, save a clinical advertisement for fungus-fighting nail polish. Authorities had raided the salon two weeks prior, declaring images of unveiled women illegal and demanding they be taken down. In Iran, women's hair salons are off limits to men anyway, so it makes little sense why photos of coiffed women should be banned in a room full of women...
...kilo, these voracious predators gorge on crustaceans, fish, other frogs, salamanders and even the occasional bird. "It's capable of attacking anything it can swallow," says Tony Dejean, the naturalist at Périgord-Limousin leading the operation. Worse, it was recently discovered that bullfrogs carry chytrid fungus, which kills other amphibians. Prior attempts to eradicate invasive species have failed in France. But the park service has already killed thousands of the frogs, their tadpoles and eggs, and residents nearby are praying this eradication mission succeeds: "Thousands of bullfrogs croaking all night is unbearable," Dejean says...
...minutes each, five days a week; that protocol was never exceeded for the next 30 years. Since 1983, the crowds that come to the region have had to settle for Lascaux II, a modern facsimile that gives them an inkling of the cave paintings' power. But before the fungus outbreak, anyone determined and patient enough could successfully petition the authorities for permission to visit the real thing. The only precaution was a requirement that visitors walk through a trough of formaldehyde solution--the regimen that Pallot-Frossard of the LRMH suggests may have inadvertently enabled the fusarium to flourish...
Pallot-Frossard contends that the fungus has not caused irreversible damage to the paintings, but others disagree. Laurence Leaute-Beasley, a Franco-American who led art tours into Lascaux from 1982 to 2001 and formed the International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux in 2004, says one knowledgeable visitor to the cave in April not only saw fusarium on the paintings but also noticed a grayish tinge to formerly black surfaces where growths had been removed. When the quicklime was removed from the cave over the course of last year, so too was what was left of the soil--which...