Mysterious Frog Die-Off Raises Warning from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

Nat Wheelwright, Bowdoin’s Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Natural Sciences, and chair of the Biology Department, documents what “was like a nuclear detonation” in his backyard pond when more than 200,000 wood frog tadpoles died within a day. As Wheelwright tells NBC News, and as he and his collaborators at the University of Tennessee reported in a study published by Herpetological Review, the culprit is likely an insidious type of virus.