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Mini saunas save endangered frogs from fungal disease

Amphibian species around the world are threatened with extinction by the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis. A simple, low-cost solution to provide warm conditions enables frogs to clear the infection and remain disease free.
By
  1. Brian Gratwicke

    1. Brian Gratwicke is at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, Virginia 22630, USA.

  2. Anna Savage

    1. Anna Savage is in the Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA.

At the 1989 World Congress of Herpetology in Canterbury, UK, scientists began discussing amphibian declines that were happening around the globe, but the cause of these enigmatic declines was unknown. A decade later, the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) was described and identified as the pathogen responsible for the deaths of frogs in Australia and in Latin America1,2. Subsequently, many other mysterious amphibian disappearances were attributed to chytridiomycosis, the disease caused by this pathogen. As amphibians have continued to disappear, zoos and aquariums around the world have created captive colonies of imperilled amphibians to provide backup for these species and buy time until a solution is found. Writing in Nature, Waddle et al.3 point to a way to tackle this problem.

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Nature 631, 277-278 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01650-z

References

  1. Collins, J. P. & Crump, M. L. Extinction in Our Times: Global Amphibian Decline (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

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  2. Berger, L. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95, 9031–9036 (1998).

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  3. Waddle, A. W. et al. Nature 631, 344–349 (2024).

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  5. Knapp, R. A. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.22.541534 (2023).

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  10. Savage, A. E., Gratwicke, B., Hope, K., Bronikowski, E. & Fleischer, R. C. Mol. Ecol. 29, 2889–2903 (2020).

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  11. Robert, J. & Edholm, E.-S. Immunogenetics 66, 513–523 (2014).

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  12. Puschendorf, R. et al. Diversity Distrib. 15, 401–408 (2009).

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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