No one wants to see pandas, polar bears, or penguins go extinct. Why have organizations like the World Wildlife Fund been so successful in garnering the general public’s support for their conservation efforts? Perhaps it is because we find these animals appealing on an affective level. In many people’s minds, they’re worth conserving for emotional reasons, perhaps more than for scientific reasons.

But did you know amphibian species worldwide are at a far greater risk of extinction than either mammals or birds? That said, how many endangered or threatened amphibian species can you name? The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has made it possible for you to answer that question with confidence. According to EDGE Amphibians: World’s Weirdest Creatures Just Got Weirder, an article from ScienceDaily, the ZSL has identified the 100 most endangered, if not already extinct, amphibian species. They call these the EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) amphibians.

See the article for a list of the amphibians at the top of the EDGE list this year and a photo of one of the endangered animals. The list includes a brief description of each species, highlighting its unique aspects. For example, number 5 on the list is the Olm, a “blind salamander with transparent skin that lives underground, hunts for its prey by smell and electrosensitivity and can survive without food for 10 years.”

The scientists involved in the program emphasize that these species have no close living relatives, making their potential extinction even more alarming. Consider that many of these species have been around millions of years, longer than mammals or birds. Some date to before the time of dinosaurs, suggesting they have some unique evolutionary features enabling species survival. If they go extinct, those yet-unstudied features will be most probably lost forever.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

The Life Science Content Standard for grades 5-8 of the National Science Education Standards includes discussion of populations and ecosystems and the diversity and adaptations of organisms. This recent study is a perfect, authentic application of these concepts.

Last week’s blog spoke of captive breeding programs for mammals, specifically carnivores, and included the concept of keystone species. Ask your students if there are amphibian keystone species. Even if they can’t name a specific species, they should use deductive reasoning to answer this.

Ask students, What’s your favorite endangered animal? Why? Lead them to an awareness that often our “favorite” is associated with emotion, rather than science. Ask how do scientists determine which are the keystone species? Lead students to the fact that an understanding of the ecological relationships in a community is necessary. How easy is it to study and come to an understanding of a rare species’ ecology? And so there is a bit of a conundrum: Rare species go extinct, and rare species are difficult to study in order to learn their value and determine how best, or if, to conserve them.

Here are some additional resources that are part of the NSDL Middle School Portal collection to facilitate your instruction regarding extinction and evolution: Extinction; Extinction and Size; and Understanding Evolution.

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