Bd in Italy

RACE team members co-authored a new paper on Bd in Italy: "The pandemic pathogen of amphibians, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Phylum Chytridiomycota), in Italy."

RACE Stakeholder Meeting in Brussels

STAKEHOLDER MEETING

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VENUE

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres e.V.
Brussels Office; Rue du Trône 98 (sixth floor)
1050 Brussels, BELGIUM

DATE

26 February 2013
If you are interested, please contact Mark Auliya To: mark.auliya@ufz.de
Subject: RACE – Stakeholder Meeting
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TENTATIVE SCHEDULE (SUBJECT TO CHANGES)

9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Morning: oral presentations (10-15 min) on topics around the chytrid fungus:
* genetics * understanding its epidemiology * the problem with exotic amphibians and pathogens * * what can we do to mitigate this disease * policy implications *
Noon: Lunch discussion
Afternoon: Round-table discussion
Find more information in our brochure

Opinion piece of David Wake

In the last 2 decades, field biologists discovered nearly 3,000 new species of amphibians. At the end of July 2012, the total number of amphibian species hit 7,000 with the addition of a high elevation glassfrog (Centrolene sabini) from Manu National Park in Amazonian Peru. At the same time, however, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) has identified amphibians as the major taxon at the greatest risk of extinction, with 41 percent of amphibian species at risk as of June 2012, and anywhere from 125 to 500 species already extinct. The full article here

European Action Plan for Alytes obstetricans and chytridiomycosis

The European Union published an Action Plan for the conservation of the Midwife toad Alytes obstetricans (the pdf [1 MB] can be found here). The members of the RACE team, Jaime Bosch and Benedikt Schmidt, contributed to the Action Plan which includes a section on chytridiomycosis.

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.