Cutaneous respiration
The skin of amphibians is a major site of respiration in all species for which measurements are available. Cutaneous respiration is the sole respiratory mode of lungless salamanders (family Plethodontidae) which lack lungs entirely yet constitute the largest family of salamanders. Cutaneous respiration in frogs and other amphibians may be the primary respiratory mode during colder temperatures.
Karen Lips
Following her PhD, Lips became an Assistant Professor at St. Lawrence University between 1995 and 1998. In that position, she returned to Costa Rica in 1996 and observed the overall abundance of frogs in the region was down 90%. Her observations echoed those documented at a number of other ecological sites where amphibians were mysteriously dying off over the previous 15 years. While some of the population decline could be attributed to habitat destruction, the areas Lips was researching were untouched and relatively unexplored environments. She moved her field research site to Fortuna, Costa Rica where she and her colleagues, including Rick Speare, found dead and dying frogs. They collected 50 dead frogs to send back to a veterinary pathologist in Maryland, who discovered that a protozoan of some sort had infiltrated their skin. With a team of collaborators, the protozoan was eventually identified as "Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis", or "Bd", which belongs to a phylum of fungus called chytrids. Amphibians drink and breathe by absorbing water and oxygen through their skin, but chytrids grow all over their bodies and interfere with their blood chemistry, leading to organ failure and eventual death. Since "Bd" was identified, it's been implicated in the collapse or extinction of over 200 amphibian species.