But everyone agrees that amphibians are especially vulnerable given that most spend a part of their life in freshwater and another part on land.
On top of chytrid, amphibians also face deforestation, habitat destruction, air and water pollution, pesticides, invasive species, a sometimes predatory pet trade and climate change.
The chromosome-happy frog is a member of an ancient lineage of amphibians known as pipids, which are only represented today by about 30 species that lack tongues and stick solely to water.
Whereas chytrid has decimated amphibians across the Americas, researchers have discovered that some species show resilience to chytrid – especially in parts of Asia and Africa – where they have probably lived with the disease for centuries.
Insects have this great otherness you wouldn't get even with amphibians.
The IUCN Red List currently considers 31 percent of the world's amphibians threatened with extinction, which is much higher than for other well-surveyed groups like mammals and birds.
Today, a growing number of amphibians survive only behind glass, but at least they survive; it's thought as many as 159 species have vanished forever in recent times.
Scientists blame chytrid, which kills amphibians by seeping in through their skin and leads to heart failure, for wiping out dozens of species and putting hundreds, maybe thousands, at risk.
Then an intrepid student named Thomas Doherty-Bone – armed with a grant from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland – headed to Cameroon to study the country's unique amphibians, including our story's hero.
A Keralan who spent most of his childhood herding cows, he scraped an education, became a plant scientist, but was increasingly drawn to amphibians.
By the reckoning of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, two-fifths of all amphibians, a quarter of mammals and an eighth of birds are threatened.
