No Bd in Hydromantes

A new paper by Ylenia Chiari et al. which was published in Amphibia-Reptilia shows that there is no Bd in Hydromantes salamanders. This is good news since RACE team members have shown that other species on Sardinia suffer from lethal chytridiomycosis. Link to the paper here.

No Bd in West Africa

A new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE suggests that there is no Bd in West Africa, even in a species that if often found in the trade. The paper (open access) can be found here (link).

New Bd distribution data on maps

New data from a study on Bd in Germany which was published in the journal Salamandra were added to the maps. This is an important addition because it's data from Bd-positive and Bd-negative sites from a country were there is not much data yet.

Are crayfish to blame?

Bd: Is there a role for crayfish? There's an interesting news story in National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121217-chytrid-fungus-amphibian-frog-crayfish-science/

New European report on invasive alien species includes Bd

The European Environment Agency just published a report on invasive alien species in Europe. There is also a chapter on Bd.

The almost complete story of RACE and Bd in Europe

The freelance journalist Katharine Sanderson has written about the RACE project, its origins and Bd research in an in-depth story at BBC. It summarizes well the research of RACE and the roles of some of the researchers involved. I particularly liked the sentence "..there are more fundamental problems to deal with – like how to get a stubborn ass to shift." That's true, not only for donkeys. Read the story here
and for those in the UK it is here

Genetic detectives hunt the global amphibian killer

'AN UNKNOWN disease springs out of nowhere and sweeps across the globe, leaving millions of dead bodies strewn in its wake. Even worse, the disease strikes not just one species, but hundreds. Nothing can check the epidemic, which threatens to drive many species to extinction....' Bob Holmes has written a thrilling article in the New Scientist about the emergence of Batrachochytrium. And, close on the heels of Bob's article comes 'Attack of the Clones' by Kai Kupferschmidt in Science, featuring Joel Sartore's now iconic image of the Sierran Rana dieoffs. It's great to see such high-quality journalist-written articles appearing in the wider media, publicising the impacts of Batrachochytrium and other emerging infectious fungi.