Variable breeding phenology affects the exposure of amphibian embryos to ultraviolet radiation: Reply

Corn and Muths (2002) describe how seasonal and annual variation in estimated flux of ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation, combined with year-to-year variation in amphibian breeding, phenology, introduces considerable variability in the UV-B exposures to amphibians. The response to our paper by Blaustein et al. (2004) misstates the objective and conclusions of our study, contains other errors of interpretation, and critiques our study for adopting practices that they themselves use. We are confident that an unbiased assessment will show that the conclusions of Corn and Muths (2002) are valid and robust with respect to montane amphibians, and that the criticisms raised by Blaustein et al. (2004) are either invalid or irrelevant.