Problems with a critically endangered frog

A Titicaca water frog (Telmatobius culeus) in the rocks

Once again we went back to Titicaca Lake to work, This time to monitor the critically endangered Titicaca Water frog Telmatobius culeus and to take samples of Chytridium  for the project that we are involved and to obtain data about this species. We worked with our team of students and volunteers during several days, this allowed us to obtain more data from different sites. We found some sites with very few individuals but also other with several. With this research we try to obtain data about where are the best populations in the lake.

trapping frogs in the lake to take Chytrid samples

A very shocking finding was that in some localities we found several dead individuals, in one locality we found almost 50% of the individuals dead; it was impressing to find just dead frogs and several individuals that were dying.

one of our sites with dead frogs

We would like to know what is the problem. For this reason we request the help from people, universities or laboratories that can help us with this, to try to find out the cause, to be able to act now in a correct way to avoid more problems.

more dead frogs in the lake

We hope that this is an isolated case and that the problem will not expand. We have some time, we can do things and we can try to work with this problem together.