Warming drives cryptic declines of amphibians in eastern Brazil

Abstract

The global amphibian extinction crisis has challenged scientists around the globe for decades. Robust long-term time-series data to detect such population declines are key to understanding how species respond to climatic variations. Thus, we assessed the species' richness and abundance of an anuran assemblage in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, where average temperatures were rising over the last 30 years. A series of models were applied to a long time-series of amphibian standardized monitoring (2010–2019) to assess the impact of a combination of a series of local climatic factors, and species life-history traits, to detect any variation on species abundance and richness. We observed a significant reduction in species abundance and a trend of reduction in species richness over time. Temperature had a stronger influence on species abundance and richness compared to precipitation. Furthermore, the most resilient species were generalist and peri-anthropic ones. Although more robust data is needed to pinpoint climate change-related variation on species decline, anticipating amphibian sensitivity to climate shift, and the limited time to act, our results are concerning. We suggest further studies to evaluate other aspects that could be influencing this local population decline and highlights that a broader amphibian monitoring program should be implemented in the Atlantic forest to detect other equally silent gradual declines.