Frog-killing fungus clues found

New findings may help ecologists understand the spread of a deadly fungus decimating amphibian populations worldwide. A group of fungi called chytrids, which includes a frog-killing pathogen, dominates soil communities in otherwise relatively lifeless habitats atop mountains in the Rockies and in Nepal, where water and multi-cellular life is often scarce, researchers report. Though these assemblages did not include the infamous __Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis__ (BD), which has hammered global

Written byBob Grant

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University of Colorado, Boulder,
microbial ecologist Steve Schmidt
sampling chytrid-rich soil in Nepal
Image: Debendra Karki

"This gives us a better picture of what chytrids do and where they are," said University of Maryland ecologist linkurl:Karen Lips,;http://chemlife.umd.edu/facultyresearch/facultydirectory/karenrlips who studies amphibian and reptile declines in Central and South America but was not involved in the current study. "When I first read this paper, I thought, 'If all these chytrids are up there, maybe the one that's attacking frogs is up there too,'" she said. "I'm almost surprised that they didn't find it." Lips told __The Scientist__ that researchers should now search for BD in similar high-elevation environs to get a better handle on how the deadly fungus spreads from habitat to habitat. "These environments seem to be a good place for chytrids in general," she said. "Maybe this does shed some light on where BD came from." "We were not expecting to see chytrids as the dominant eukaryotic life forms in those soils," linkurl:Steve Schmidt,;http://amo.colorado.edu/schmidtlab/people.html the University of Colorado, Boulder, microbial ecologist who led the study, told __The Scientist__. "These kinds of chytrids seem to be easily dispersed, probably by the wind." That would account for the fact that Schmidt and his colleagues found similar assemblages of chytrid species in places as far separated as Colorado and Kathmandu. They present their linkurl:findings;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/13/0907303106.abstract in this week's issue of the __Proceedings of the National Academy of Science__. linkurl:Joyce Longcore,;http://biology.umaine.edu/run.php?pg=User&user_id=77 a University of Maine mycologist and a coauthor on the study, agreed that finding a community dominated by chytrids was surprising, but cautioned against jumping to conclusions about BD based on these data. "Because there was so little obvious organic matter up there, it was surprising" to find chytrid fungi dominating, she said. Longcore explained that chytrid RNA sequences dominating eukaryote communities more than 3,500 meters up on remote mountaintops probably came from asexual "resting structures," or spores, common to many fungi. These spores can typically withstand extreme desiccation and are often dispersed by the wind. "Just because most [chytrids] have resistant spores doesn't mean they all do," Longcare said. But, she added, "I'm still not willing to rule out the possibility that there are resting structures [in BD], but we just have not seen them yet." Finding eukaryote communities dominated by chytrids at higher elevations does mesh with some of Lips's observations in Central and South America, where chytridiomycosis (the disease caused by BD) is rampant. She said that at her study sites in Panama and Costa Rica, a few hundred meters in elevation can make a huge difference on how rapacious chytridiomycosis is. She noted that some 1900 meter peaks are essentially devoid of frogs, their populations decimated by the fungus, while just 1000 meters down the mountain, some chytrid-free frogs can still be found. "The higher elevation sites are much more affected than the mid or low elevation sites."
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:A frog's foe;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55115/
[November 2008]*linkurl:Frog fungus spreads in Panama;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55098/
[17th October 2008]*linkurl:Climate Change and Frog Deaths;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54046/
[Januray 2008]

Meet the Author

Bob Grant

From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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