The 9th World Congress of Herpetology has attracted 874 people— about 90% of them from 57 other countries— to Dunedin and to the University of Otago, which is hosting the gathering this week.
Overseas visitors were taking a keen interest in tuatara, and about 100 other endemic New Zealand lizards, including many species which had been discovered by scientists in recent decades, he said.
Prof Bishop, of Otago, who is a specialist in frogs and is the conference director, yesterday gave a talk on ‘‘the amphibian chytrid fungus in New Zealand’’.
Chytridiomycosis is an infectious disease that affects amphibians, including frogs, worldwide.
It is caused by a form of the chytrid fungus known as Bd (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis).
This fungus can cause sporadic deaths in some amphibian populations, and the death of every infected creature in others.
An incursion of a form of salamander, called the alpine newt, had been detected on the Coromandel Peninsula and they were thought to have escaped from an illegal importer between 1995-2005.
Many of these newts tested positive for Bd and this could be is the original source of Bd in New Zealand.
‘‘It highlights the problem of introduced species,’’ Prof Bishop said.
New Zealand had ‘‘really good border control’’, he added.
Nevertheless, a mass decline in Archey’s frog and among some introduced frogs in the South Island showed the ‘‘catastrophic’’ damage that such illegal importations could cause.
The fungus was first detected here in native frogs — in Archey’s frog, our smallest native species — on the Coromandel Peninsula in 2001.
It was suggested that Bd was also responsible for a mass decline (88%) in that frog population between 1994 and 2002, he said.
