Exploiting frog behaviour to fight the Chytrid pandemic

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) causes chytridiomycosis, a disease responsible for the extinction of 90 amphibian species and the delcine of hundreds more worldwide. The loss of amphibian biodiversity caused by hytridiomycosis has had cascading ecological impacts. Small and newly metamorphosed frogs are particularly vulnerable to severe disease and death due to immunosuppression during metamorphosis and intensity-of-infection disease dynamics. To prevent further extinctions, it is necessary to develop novel strategies that enable species to persist alongside the pathogen. I will use simple choice experiments to investigate whether frogs can detect and learn to avoid free-living Bd in the environment, and avoid infected conspecfics. Despite elevated temperature being reported as a safe and effective way to clear Bd infections, I was not able to successfully clear infections in L. caerulea using a previously successful heat therapy protocol. It is likely that elevated temperature is only effective when combined with suitable relative humidity conditions. Understanding the precise relative humidity and temperature conditions necessary for frogs to clear their infections will enable the design and development of artifcial refugia that can provide these conditions to free-ranging frogs in the field, enabling wild frogs to mitigate and/or clear their Bd infections. By the end of my PhD I expect to have (1) determined whether L. aurea demonstrate behavioural immunity in response to chytrid infection, (2) categorised the combined humidity and temperature conditions necessary for L. aurea and L. caerulea to clear Bd infections, and (3) developed field-ready artificial refugia that enable free-ranging frogs to mitigate Bd infections.