Into the heart of an epidemic: a US-Brazil collaboration for integrative studies of the amphibian-killing fungus in Brazil

Abstract

We propose planning meetings and preliminary data generation to seed new international collaborations for studies of the ecology and evolution of the amphibian-killing fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Causes of species declines in the Atlantic Forest include habitat destruction and invasive species, but the contribution of the chytridiomycosis, which has caused global amphibian declines, is uncertain. Our initial results verified that the disease is widespread and evidence suggest that the genetic diversity of the pathogen in Brazil is greater than in any other country sampled to date. Therefore, we are planning 2 meetings, 1 in the US and 1 in Brazil, to bring together faculty and student researchers from 5 participating laboratories, establish the directions and participation of various members in collaborative projects, define plans for upcoming applications for funding for this work, and collect the preliminary data to establish a foundation for future collaborative research proposals. Combined, our research interests fall into the major areas: 1) discover the spatial and temporal occurrence of Bd in Brazil by taking advantage of historical collections in focal anurans likely to be Bd hosts, 2) identify patterns in genetic variation in contemporary populations to test for disease endemism and recombination, and 3) integrate historical occurrence with phenotypic and genotypic variation relevant to pathogenicity by building research protocols and a large genetic repository of Brazilian Bd strains. These areas will be studied both by means of broad and local scale approaches. Our aim is to provide a first general and deep assessment of this emergent disease that is directly associated to amphibian population declines and extinctions worldwide. (AU)