This repository contains code, data, and figures that support:
Connelly, P.J., N. Ross, O.C. Stringham, and E.A. Eskew. 2023. United States amphibian imports pose a disease risk to salamanders despite Lacey Act regulations. Communications Earth & Environment 4: 351.
The global amphibian trade is closely linked to wildlife disease issues because of the potential for spread of either of the two fungi responsible for amphibian chytridiomycosis, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) or Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). A primary aim of this project was evaluate the efficacy of a 2016 wildlife trade policy that sought to reduce the likelihood of Bsal introduction to the United States by banning the import of 20 salamander genera. To address this question and describe patterns in amphibian imports more generally, we collated and cleaned a dataset of amphibian imports into the United States from 1999 to 2021, building off previous EcoHealth Alliance efforts to curate the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS) data. The full, cleaned dataset, with taxonomy reconciled to the AmphibiaWeb nomenclature is available in this repository.
/datacontains all raw and cleaned data files/cleanedcontains cleaned versions of all three LEMIS data subsets that are combined in this analysis as well as the full, cleaned dataset/rawcontains the raw LEMIS data that is cleaned and combined in this analysis/referencecontains tables with information on Bsal carrier taxa, as gathered from the literature, and the taxa listed under the 2016 Lacey Act interim ruling/taxonomycontains AmphibiaWeb taxonomic information as well as tables used to clean the LEMIS taxonomic data
/misccontains the footer image used in this README page/outputscontains all figures output from the05_amphibian_trade_analyses.Rscript/scriptscontains the primary analysis scripts, numbered in order of execution
