Hotspot shelters stimulate frog resistance to chytridiomycosis

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Waddle, Anthony W.; Clulow, Simon; Aquilina, Amy; Sauer, Erin L.; Kaiser, Shannon W.; Miller, Claire; Flegg, Jennifer A.; Campbell, Patricia T.; Gallagher, Harrison; Dimovski, Ivana; Lambreghts, Yorick; Berger, Lee; Skerratt, Lee F.; Shine, Richard
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne; Macquarie University; Macquarie University; University of Canberra; University of Arkansas System; University of Arkansas Fayetteville; University of Melbourne; University of Auckland; University of Melbourne; Peter Doherty Institute; University of Melbourne; University of Tasmania
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-5795
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07582-y
• 发表日期: 2024-07-11
• 关键词: golden bell frog; batrachochytrium-dendrobatidis; disease; temperature; infection; pathogen; green; susceptibility; amphibians; australia

摘要

Many threats to biodiversity cannot be eliminated; for example, invasive pathogens may be ubiquitous. Chytridiomycosis is a fungal disease that has spread worldwide, driving at least 90 amphibian species to extinction, and severely affecting hundreds of others1-4. Once the disease spreads to a new environment, it is likely to become a permanent part of that ecosystem. To enable coexistence with chytridiomycosis in the field, we devised an intervention that exploits host defences and pathogen vulnerabilities. Here we show that sunlight-heated artificial refugia attract endangered frogs and enable body temperatures high enough to clear infections, and that having recovered in this way, frogs are subsequently resistant to chytridiomycosis even under cool conditions that are optimal for fungal growth. Our results provide a simple, inexpensive and widely applicable strategy to buffer frogs against chytridiomycosis in nature. The refugia are immediately useful for the endangered species we tested and will have broader utility for amphibian species with similar ecologies. Furthermore, our concept could be applied to other wildlife diseases in which differences in host and pathogen physiologies can be exploited. The refugia are made from cheap and readily available materials and therefore could be rapidly adopted by wildlife managers and the public. In summary, habitat protection alone cannot protect species that are affected by invasive diseases, but simple manipulations to microhabitat structure could spell the difference between the extinction and the persistence of endangered amphibians. Artificial thermal refugia-sites heated to temperatures higher than that of the surrounding environment-provide a way to protect an endangered Australian frog species from a fungal disease that has caused the extinction of many amphibians.