Riding The Wave: Reconciling The Roles Of Disease And Climate Change In Amphibian Declines

Once introduced, diseases may spread quickly through new areas infecting naive host populations, such as has been documented in Ebola virus in African
primates or rabies in North American mammals.


What drives the spread of the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes
chytridiomycosis, is of particular concern because it has contributed to the global decline of amphibians. In this week's PLoS Biology, Jay
Diffendorfer, Michael Sears, and Karen Lips show how they modeled the spatio-temporal pattern of the loss of upland amphibian populations in Central
and South America as a proxy for the arrival of Bd and found that amphibian declines in Central and South America are best explained by Bd spreading
through upland populations, and identified four separate introductions of Bd into South America.


Climate change seriously threatens biodiversity, and
influences endemic host-pathogen systems, but they found no evidence that climate change has been driving outbreaks of chytridiomycosis, as has been
posited in the climate-linked epidemic hypothesis. Their findings further strengthen the spreading pathogen hypothesis proposed for Central America
and identify new evidence for similar patterns of decline in South American amphibians.


Their results will inform management and research efforts
related to Bd and other invasive species, as effective conservation actions depend on correctly identifying essential threats to biodiversity, and
possible synergistic interactions.



Riding the wave: Reconciling the roles of disease and climate change in amphibian declines.
Lips KR, Diffendorfer J, Mendelson JR III, Sears MW (2008)

PLoS Biol 6(3):e72. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060072

Please click here to view article online


PLoS Biology

plosbiology


Public Library of Science

185 Berry Street, Suite 3100

San Francisco, CA 94107

USA