I discovered... why many frogs and other amphibian species were disappearing

It was while we were sitting and talking in a hotel bar at the first global congress of Herpetology that the world's amphibian experts realised there was a problem: frogs, toads, salamanders and newts were disappearing in their thousands and nobody understood why.

- Andrew Cunningham

Not a single talk at the 1989 congress at the University of Kent had discussed the disappearance of the world's amphibians. But scientist after scientist had the same story: from Central America to Australia, they were vanishing.

The year before, I had joined the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) as a veterinary pathologist. It was my job to work out why animals had died. Shortly after I started, members of the public began calling up London Zoo with news that dozens of frogs had died in their gardens without explanation.

More and more of these reports started to come in. I started testing the dead frogs to find out what was going on as part of a PhD, and found a ranavirus had been spreading through frogs in England.