Weather cycles may drive toad decline

For the first time, scientists have linked climate change to a specific mechanism

Too much ultraviolet-B radiation renders western toad eggs (top) susceptible to a funguslike killer (bottom). Kiesecker / Nature

of doom for one of North America’s amphibians.

The plump, lumpy western toad, Bufo boreas, has been declining even in relatively

pristine havens like the heights of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, laments

Joseph M.