How does fungus kill frogs

R esearchers have tallied the global death toll of the frog-killing chytrid fungus and its devastation is far worse than scientists thought, according to a study published yesterday March 28 in Science. The fungal pathogens that cause the disease chytridiomycosis ravage the skin of frogs, toads, and other amphibians, throwing off their balance of water and salt and eventually causing heart failure, Nature reports.

One fungus implicated in causing chytridiomycosis was discovered in while another was found in In a bad case of chytridiomycosis, the skin simply stops working. The frog loses so many electrolytes that it suffers a heart attack. Frog die-offs have knock-on effects for the ecosystem. In Panama, Lips has found, streams that once ran clear will turn green without tadpoles to feed on the algae.

Once the amphibians that eat mosquitoes and flies are gone, insect-borne diseases could also spread more quickly among humans. Joyce Longcore, a mycologist at the University of Maine, first identified and named Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in , after studying blue poison-dart frogs that died at the National Zoo in Washington, D.

Longcore is a longtime expert on chytrid fungi. Its spread coincides with the rise of global trade. These biologists were working in remote rainforests in Queensland in the s and s where frog populations had been abundant.

The job for Associate Professor Lee Berger, who was a PhD student at the time, was to find out what was happening to the frogs, and why there was suddenly such a drop in the populations that season. These declines were not only happening in Australia but other parts of the world too, a trend since the s.

The answer: chytridiomycosis, also known as amphibian chytrid fungus disease chytrid is pronounced KY-trid. In , Berger discovered this fungal skin disease had devastated frog species. So we were looking for disease. As a wildlife veterinarian, Berger has dedicated the majority of her career since that landmark discovery to studying the effect of chytrid fungus on frogs, how to manage the disease, and ultimately, how to conserve amphibian biodiversity.

Chytridiomycosis is now recognised as the worst disease to impact biodiversity globally. Protecting them keeps ecosystems healthy since biological diversity is the basis for resilient forests, thus helping control pests and zoonotic infections. Materials provided by Microbiology Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Story Source: Materials provided by Microbiology Society. Journal Reference : Juan G. Abarca, Steven M.

Genotyping and differential bacterial inhibition of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in threatened amphibians in Costa Rica. Microbiology , ; DOI: