Skin Fight: Could Bacteria Carried by Amphibians Save Them from Extinction?
As many as one third of the world's 6,260 known amphibian species are in danger of going extinct. The main killer--outside of ongoing destruction of habitat--is a fungal disease known as chytrid ( Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ). Now researchers in California and Virginia have identified symbiotic bacteria living on amphibians' skins that protects them from the deadly fungal disease, and later this summer the scientists will collect some of the microbial samples, culture them in the lab, and use the product to inoculate some frogs in California's Sierra Nevada to see if the approach stops chytrid in the wild. If a management plan can be developed, "creating a self-disseminating system [to fight chytrid] will be revolutionary," says Reid Harris, a biologist at James Madison University (J.M.U.) in Harrisonburg, Va., and one of the scientists whose research led to isolating and identifying this bacteria group in a telephone interview. ...