Tiffany Yap comes to the rescue of salamanders

Tiffany Yap, a recent graduate of the Environmental Science and Engineering doctoral program, has already found herself in the academic limelight. Her research on the potential decimation of salamanders was published in Science. Yap and her colleagues urged U.S. officials to halt the salamander pet trade and prevent the spread of Bsal bacteria, an Asian pathogen that is deadly to the amphibians. Half of all salamander species are found in the U.S. and have no immunity to the pathogen.

Yap’s research highlighted the regions in the U.S. that are most susceptible to Bsal infiltration. Five months after her paper was published, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service banned the import of 201 salamander species. The U.S. Geological Survey has also come out with steps to prevent Bsal entering the U.S., and an international task force has been established to combat the deadly bacterial.

Yap’s salamander findings caught the attention of NPR, The New York Times and Wired.