The frog that out-bet the healthy ones
A fungus told the frog it was dying. Chytrid, the worst wildlife disease on record, linked to around ninety amphibian extinctions. The green and golden bell frog lost more than ninety percent of its range.
The frog answered with a bet. Males with a moderate infection made more sperm than healthy ones, the most a body can spend on a tomorrow it may never see. The paper's word for it: short-term reproductive investment under elevated mortality risk. Told to die, the frog gambles everything on one last chance.
Then came the cure. Heat, a slow climb to thirty-seven degrees, held for hours. The fungus dies; the infection clears in every treated frog. The frog that expected to die got to live.
Six months later, the bill: sperm counts still low, swimming only partly back. The gamble had a price, and the price stayed after the danger left. Survival is not recovery. The frog is alive, and the smaller print takes six months to read.
Sources: Upton et al., Journal of Experimental Biology (2026). doi:10.1242/jeb.252760 · PubMed 42411063
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