Wednesday 11 December 2013

Horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2014 lists probiotic anti-Bd therapy as an important topic

From the paper: "Many amphibian populations in relatively pristine habitats are in decline or are becoming extirpated due to the skin disease chytridiomycosis. Probiotic therapy through bioaugmentation is now emerging as a potential solution for mitigating this disease. The microbiome, the bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live within and upon every organism, has become a growing area of human health research, but relatively little attention has been paid to the nonhuman microbiome. Bioaugmentation could both facilitate reintroduction of amphibians to areas from which they have been extirpated and reduce the magnitude of declines in areas not yet affected by chytridiomycosis. Although the concept of probiotic therapy is promising, laboratory and field experiments on treatment of amphibians with probiotic baths have yielded mixed results, and the method has not yet been applied over large natural areas. Potential environmental effects of bioaugmentation on nontarget amphibians and other taxonomic groups are not well known." The pdf (open access) can be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534713002772

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