Deadly frog disease spreads through tolerant species

There is no point sending healthy animals out into the world if they're just going to catch a deadly disease.

Pacific tree frogs that can survive a normally lethal fungus infection are spreading it to species that cannot. Such "reservoir" species could threaten frogs released from captive breeding programmes.

Between 2003 and 2010, the deadly chytrid fungus slashed the populations of two frog species in the Sierra Nevada, while populations of a third species ? the Pacific tree frog (Pseudacris regilla) ? held steady.

That isn't because the Pacific tree frogs avoided infection: two-thirds of the Sierra Nevada population carry the fungus, Vance Vredenburg of San Francisco State University has now found. That suggests they can tolerate infection and so could spread the pathogen to new areas.

Conservationists are breeding threatened amphibians in captivity in the hope of eventually re-establishing them in the wild. But reintroductions will fail if there is a reservoir species nearby, Vredenburg warns.

The solution may be to breed from frog populations already decimated by the chytrid fungus, says Matthew Fisher of Imperial College London. There is evidence that some frogs are evolving tolerance, and survivors from an affected population are more likely to have the vital genes. These frogs could be cross-bred with susceptible individuals, accelerating the spread of tolerance ? although Fisher admits the approach will be expensive.

Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0033567

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