Chytridiomycosis is the disease of amphibians caused by the fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Given the severe impacts of this disease on the world's amphibian biodiversity, there is a lot of interest in mitigating these impacts to the extent possible. I wrote about some of those efforts in a previous post. Doug Woodhams and colleagues have just published a paper that reviews the progress made to date in this important field (pdf). Having been involved in research that tested some mitigation strategies, I suspect that it will be quite a while before we have effective mitigation measures that can be effectively applied in the wild.
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April 25, 2011
Mitigating the Effects of Chytridiomycosis - Part 2
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ok.. On the new fledglings that you posted on http://anuranblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/with-spring-come-new-frog.html, are they being treated in any special way to test resistance to Bd, or are they just put out there as is? I know there is no easy answer, unless the basket of kittens come through with a cure. :)
ReplyDeleteRuss
Hi Russ. The captive-bred southern California R. muscosa are not being tested for resistance to Bd. All frog populations in that area are Bd-positive and appear to be persisting despite ongoing chytridiomycosis. So, the assumption is that these frogs have at least some ability to deal with this disease.
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